Louisiana
The Project BookishMall.com EBook of Lousiana, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
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Title: Lousiana
Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
Release Date: February 17, 2011 [EBook #35300]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT BookishMall.com EBOOK LOUSIANA ***
Produced by Al Haines
"ASK YOUR SISTER," SHE REPLIED. "IT WAS HER PLAN."
LOUISIANA
BY
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
AUTHOR OF "HAWORTH'S," "THAT LASS O' LOWRIE'S," ETC.
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
743 AND 745 BROADWAY
1880
COPYRIGHT BY
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT,
1880.
(All rights reserved.)
TROW'S
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING Co.,
201-213 East 12th St.,
NEW YORK.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
LOUISIANA
CHAPTER II.
WORTH
CHAPTER III.
"HE IS DIFFERENT"
CHAPTER IV.
A NEW TYPE
CHAPTER V.
"I HAVE HURT YOU"
CHAPTER VI.
THE ROAD TO THE RIGHT
CHAPTER VII.
"SHE AINT YERE"
CHAPTER VIII.
"NOTHING HAS HURT YOU"
CHAPTER IX.
"DON'T YE, LOUISIANNY?"
CHAPTER X.
THE GREAT WORLD
CHAPTER XI.
A RUSTY NAIL
CHAPTER XII.
"MEBBE"
CHAPTER XIII.
A NEW PLAN
CHAPTER XIV.
CONFESSIONS
CHAPTER XV.
"IANTHY!"
CHAPTER XVI.
"DON'T DO NO ONE A ONJESTICE"
CHAPTER XVII.
A LEAF
CHAPTER XVIII.
"HE KNEW THAT I LOVED YOU"
LOUISIANA.
CHAPTER I.
LOUISIANA.
Olivia Ferrol leaned back in her chair, her hands folded upon her lap.
People passed and repassed her as they promenaded the long "gallery,"
as it was called; they passed in couples, in trios; they talked with
unnecessary loudness, they laughed at their own and each other's jokes;
they flirted, they sentimentalized, they criticised each other, but
none of them showed any special interest in Olivia Ferrol, nor did Miss
Ferrol, on her part, show much interest in them.
She had been at Oakvale Springs for two weeks. She was alone, out of
her element, and knew nobody. The fact that she was a New Yorker, and
had never before been so far South, was rather against her. On her
arrival she had been glanced over and commented upon with candor.
"She is a Yankee," said the pretty and remarkably youthful-looking
mother of an apparently grown-up family from New Orleans. "You can see
it."
And though the remark was not meant to be exactly severe, Olivia felt
that it was very severe, indeed, under existing circumstances. She
heard it as she was giving her orders for breakfast to her own
particular jet-black and highly excitable waiter, and she felt guilty
at once and blushed, hastily taking a sip of ice-water to conceal her
confusion. When she went upstairs afterward she wrote a very
interesting letter to her brother in New York, and tried to make an
analysis of her sentiments for his edification.
"You advised me to come here because it would be novel as well as
beneficial," she wrote. "And it certainly is novel. I think I feel
like a Pariah—a little. I am aware that even the best bred and most
intelligent of them, hearing that I have always lived in New York, will
privately regret it if they like me and remember it if they dislike me.
Good-natured and warm-hearted as they seem among themselves, I am sure
it will be I who will have to make the advances—if advances are
made—and I must be very amiable, indeed, if I intend that they shall
like me."
But she had not been well enough at first to be in the humor to make
the advances, and consequently had not found her position an exciting
one. She had looked on until she had been able to rouse herself to
some pretty active likes and dislikes, but she knew no one.
She felt this afternoon as if this mild recreation of looking on had
begun rather to pall upon her, and she drew out her watch, glancing at
it with a little yawn.
"It is five o'clock," she said. "Very soon the band will make its
appearance, and it will bray until the stages come in. Yes, there it
is!"
The musical combination to which she referred was composed of six or
seven gentlemen of color who played upon brazen instruments, each in
different keys and different time. Three times a day they collected on
a rustic kiosk upon the lawn and played divers popular airs with an
intensity, fervor, and muscular power worthy of a better cause. They
straggled up as she spoke, took their places and began, and before they
had played many minutes the most exciting event of the day occurred, as
it always did somewhere about this hour. In the midst of the gem of
their collection was heard the rattle of wheels and the crack of whips,
and through the rapturous shouts of the juvenile guests, the two
venerable, rickety stages dashed up with a lumbering flourish, and a
spasmodic pretense of excitement, calculated to deceive only the
feeblest mind.
At the end of the gallery they checked themselves in their mad career,
the drivers making strenuous efforts to restrain the impetuosity of the
four steeds whose harness rattled against their ribs with an unpleasant
bony sound. Half a dozen waiters rushed forward, the doors were flung
open, the steps let down with a bang, the band brayed insanely, and the
passengers alighted.—"One, two, three, four," counted Olivia Ferrol,
mechanically, as the first vehicle unburdened itself. And then, as the
door of the second was opened: "One—only one: and a very young one,
too. Dear me! Poor girl!"
This exclamation might naturally have fallen from any quick-sighted and
sympathetic person. The solitary passenger of the second stage stood
among the crowd, hesitating, and plainly overwhelmed with timorousness.
Three waiters were wrestling with an ugly shawl, a dreadful shining
valise, and a painted wooden trunk, such as is seen in country stores.
In their enthusiastic desire to dispose creditably of these articles
they temporarily forgot the owner, who, after one desperate, timid
glance at them, looked round her in vain for succor. She was very
pretty and very young and very ill-dressed—her costume a bucolic
travesty on prevailing modes. She did not know where to go, and no one
thought of showing her; the loungers about the office stared at her;
she began to turn pale with embarrassment and timidity. Olivia Ferrol
left her chair and crossed the gallery. She spoke to a servant a
little sharply:
"Why not show the young lady into the parlor?" she said.
The girl heard, and looked at her helplessly, but with gratitude. The
waiter darted forward with hospitable rapture.
"Dis yeah's de way, miss," he said, "right inter de 'ception-room.
Foller me, ma'am."
Olivia returned to her seat. People were regarding her with curiosity,
but she was entirely oblivious of the fact.
"That is one of them," she was saying, mentally. "That is one of them,
and a very interesting type it is, too."
To render the peculiarities of this young woman clearer, it may be well
to reveal here something of her past life and surroundings.
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