The Perennial Bachelor

The Perennial Bachelor

By Anne Parrish.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Dedication
4. The Perennial Bachelor
   1. I
   2. II
   3. III
   4. IV
   5. V
   6. VI
   7. VII
   8. VIII
   9. IX
   10. X
   11. XI
   12. XII
   13. XIII
   14. XIV
   15. XV
   16. XVI
   17. XVII
   18. XVIII
   19. XIX
   20. XX
   21. XXI
   22. XXII
   23. XXIII
   24. XXIV
   25. XXV
   26. XXVI
   27. XXVII
   28. XXVIII
   29. XXIX
   30. XXX
   31. XXXI
   32. XXXII
   33. XXXIII
5. Colophon
6. Uncopyright

Imprint

This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.

This particular ebook is based on a transcription from Faded Page and on digital scans from the Internet Archive.

The source text and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. They may still be copyrighted in other countries, so users located outside of the United States must check their local laws before using this ebook. The creators of, and contributors to, this ebook dedicate their contributions to the worldwide public domain via the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. For full license information, see the Uncopyright at the end of this ebook.

Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org.

To
Frances Brincklerbee

The Perennial Bachelor

I

As she lay floating in the grey river that flows between sleeping and waking, Maggie Campion knew, without remembering why, that it was a happy day. And when she opened her eyes, the sunlight falling on the carpet in stripes of pale warm gold, the warm buff walls, even the fat little buff potichomanie flagons with their crimson rosebuds, all held a secret happiness⁠—what was it? The looped-back muslin curtains were like ladies in billowing white, curtseying to each other, two in each window, and even Maggie’s stout scuffed little shoes on the floor where she had left them when she undressed, pointed their toes in the first position of dancing.

She lay pressing her hands together under the blankets, floating in this still bright bliss. She remembered now what it was. It was Papa’s birthday, and he was coming home from New York.

Maggie was ten years old, with light eyes looking out from under dark scowling brows, brown hair that fell straight and limp from curling-rags even as they were unrolled, and a face covered with freckles. She was more like a boy than a girl, everyone said. She was always carrying hop-toads about in her hat, or tearing her petticoats climbing trees and sliding down the ice house roof. She was sometimes as bold as brass and sometimes one crimson blush of shyness, and she had the strangest ways of showing people that she loved them⁠—boasting in front of them in a loud gruff voice, making awful faces, twisting one leg around the other, or standing on the sides of her feet.

Six-year-old May slept beside her in the big bed carved with oak-leaves and acorns, under the picture of the guardian angel hovering above the little brother and sister gathering wild flowers at the edge of the precipice. May had short bright brown curls foaming all over her head, and brown eyes with long curled lashes, and she knew perfectly well what Mamma’s friends meant when they exclaimed, “Oh, what a little b-e-a-u-t-y!” She loved her pretty clothes, and never tore them as Maggie did, but would stroke her small muff or her best blue sash as another little girl might stroke a kitten; and Mamma had been dreadfully troubled once to find her kissing her best bonnet goodnight. When May loved people she told them so, flinging her arms around them and kissing them again and again, which they found at first charming and presently exhausting, for she never knew when to stop, and always had to be disentangled, like a burr or a kitten, and carried weeping from the room.

Sometimes, when there was company of an evening, Papa would pick her up out of bed and carry her downstairs in her nightgown to dance on the top of the piano, while Mamma played, not quite accurately, but with a lot of ripple and splash, and Papa sang in the voice that pierced so thrillingly the heart of his eldest daughter, lying awake in the dark:

“ ‘Sound, sound, the tambourine,
Welcome now the gipsy star;
Strike, strike the mandoline,
And the light guitar;
When the moon is beaming bright,
The gipsies dance, the gipsies dance;
’Neath the moonbeams’ glittering ray,
Now their figures glance.
See, see, they trip along,
O’er the green, o’er the green,
List, list, the cheerful song,
To the merry, merry, merry, merry, merry, merry, merry,
merry, merry, merry, merry, merry,
tambourine!’ ”

And excited little May would hold up her long nightie and dance, while the company applauded. But she generally ended in tears. “May is very high-strung,” Mamma would say, gently complacent.

Lily, who was four, lay in a cot beside the big bed, as fat and fast asleep as a milk-white kitten. Her hair was palest silky yellow, curling up in little duck-tails from her fat neck, and her round eyes, so tight shut now, were like Mamma’s, as blue as flower petals. She trotted through childhood’s endless days on fat legs that could never catch up with Maggie and May, calling always, “Wait! Wait! Wait for Lily!”

Maggie, lying there, heard from below the swish, swish of Albert’s broom, sweeping the porch; the squeak of the pump-handle as old Chloe filled the kettle;