'Don't object to me, or think me officious,' Ransom replied. 'I want to ask you something.'
Miss Birdseye looked at him again. 'Oh yes, I place you now; you conversed some with Doctor Prance.'
'To my great edification!' Ransom exclaimed. 'And I hope Doctor Prance is well.'
'She looks after every one's health but her own,' said Miss Birdseye, smiling. 'When I tell her that, she says she hasn't got any to look after. She says she's the only woman in Boston that hasn't got a doctor. She was determined she wouldn't be a patient, and it seemed as if the only way not to be one was to be a doctor. She is trying to make me sleep; that's her principal occupation.'
'Is it possible you don't sleep yet?' Ransom asked, almost tenderly.
'Well, just a little. But by the time I get to sleep I have to get up. I can't sleep when I want to live.'
'You ought to come down South,' the young man suggested. 'In that languid air you would doze deliciously!'
'Well, I don't want to be languid,' said Miss Birdseye. 'Besides, I have been down South, in the old times, and I can't say they let me sleep very much; they were always round after me!'
'Do you mean on account of the negroes?'
'Yes, I couldn't think of anything else then. I carried them the Bible.'
Ransom was silent a moment; then he said, in a tone which evidently was carefully considerate, 'I should like to hear all about that!'
'Well, fortunately, we are not required now; we are required for something else.' And Miss Birdseye looked at him with a wandering, tentative humour, as if he would know what she meant.
'You mean for the other slaves!' he exclaimed, with a laugh. 'You can carry them all the Bibles you want.'
'I want to carry them the Statute-book; that must be our Bible now.'
Ransom found himself liking Miss Birdseye very much, and it was quite without hypocrisy or a tinge too much of the local quality in his speech that he said: 'Wherever you go, madam, it will matter little what you carry. You will always carry your goodness.'
For a minute she made no response. Then she murmured: 'That's the way Olive Chancellor told me you talked.'
'I am afraid she has told you little good of me.'
'Well, I am sure she thinks she is right.'
'Thinks it?' said Ransom. 'Why, she knows it, with supreme certainty! By the way, I hope she is well.'
Miss Birdseye stared again. 'Haven't you seen her? Are you not visiting?'
'Oh no, I am not visiting! I was literally passing her house when I met you.'
'Perhaps you live here now,' said Miss Birdseye. And when he had corrected this impression, she added, in a tone which showed with what positive confidence he had now inspired her, 'Hadn't you better drop in?'
'It would give Miss Chancellor no pleasure,' Basil Ransom rejoined. 'She regards me as an enemy in the camp.'
'Well, she is very brave.'
'Precisely. And I am very timid.'
'Didn't you fight once?'
'Yes; but it was in such a good cause!'
Ransom meant this allusion to the great Secession and, by comparison, to the attitude of the resisting male (laudable even as that might be), to be decently jocular; but Miss Birdseye took it very seriously, and sat there for a good while as speechless as if she meant to convey that she had been going on too long now to be able to discuss the propriety of the late rebellion. The young man felt that he had silenced her, and he was very sorry; for, with all deference to the disinterested Southern attitude toward the unprotected female, what he had got into the car with her for was precisely to make her talk. He had wished for general, as well as for particular, news of Verena Tarrant; it was a topic on which he had proposed to draw Miss Birdseye out. He preferred not to broach it himself, and he waited awhile for another opening. At last, when he was on the point of exposing himself by a direct inquiry (he reflected that the exposure would in any case not be long averted), she anticipated him by saying, in a manner which showed that her thoughts had continued in the same train, 'I wonder very much that Miss Tarrant didn't affect you that evening!'
'Ah, but she did!' Ransom said, with alacrity. 'I thought her very charming!'
'Didn't you think her very reasonable?'
'God forbid, madam! I consider women have no business to be reasonable.'
His companion turned upon him, slowly and mildly, and each of her glasses, in her aspect of reproach, had the glitter of an enormous tear. 'Do you regard us, then, simply as lovely baubles?'
The effect of this question, as coming from Miss Birdseye, and referring in some degree to her own venerable identity, was such as to move him to irresistible laughter. But he controlled himself quickly enough to say, with genuine expression, 'I regard you as the dearest thing in life, the only thing which makes it worth living!'
'Worth living for—you! But for us?' suggested Miss Birdseye.
'It's worth any woman's while to be admired as I admire you. Miss Tarrant, of whom we were speaking, affected me, as you say, in this way—that I think more highly still, if possible, of the sex which produced such a delightful young lady.'
