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Miranda Griscom opened the long wooden shutters of the Spafford parlor and threw them back with a triumphant clang, announcing the opening of a new day. She arranged the slat shades at just the right angle, gave a comprehensive glance at the immaculate room, and whisked out on the front stoop with her broom.

Not a cobweb reared in the night remained for any early morning visitor to view with condemning eye, no, not if he arrived before breakfast, for Miranda always descended upon the unsightly gossamer and swept it out of existence the very first thing in the morning.

The steps were swept clean, also the seats on either side of the stoop, even the ceiling and rails, then she descended to the brick pavement and plied her broom like a whirlwind till every fallen leaf and stray bit of dust hurried away before her onslaught. With an air of duty for the moment done, Miranda returned to the stoop, and leaning on her broom gazed diagonally across the street to the great house set back a little from the road, and surrounded by a row of stately stiff gray poplars.

Just so she had stood and gazed every morning, briefly, for the past five years; ever since the owner of that stately mansion had offered her his heart and hand, and the opportunity to bring up his family of seven.

It had been a dark rainy night in the middle of November, that time he first came to see her. All day long it had drizzled, and by evening settled into a steady dismal pour. Miranda had been upstairs, when he knocked, hovering over the baby Rose, tucking the soft blankets with tender brooding hand, stooping low over the cradle to catch the soft music of her rose-leaf breath; and David Spafford had gone to the door to let his neighbor in.

Nathan Whitney, tall, gaunt, gray and embarrassed, stood under his streaming umbrella on the front stoop with a background of rain, and gravely asked if he might see Miss Griscom.

David, surprised but courteous, asked him in, took his dripping umbrella and overcoat from him, and escorted him into the parlor; but his face was a study of mingled emotions when he came softly into the library and shut the door before he told his young wife Marcia that Nathan Whitney was in the parlor and wanted to see Miranda.

Marcia's speaking face went through all tile swift changes of surprise and wonder, but without a word save a moment's questioning with her eyes, she went to call Miranda.

"Goodness me!" said that dazed individual, shading the candle from her eyes and looking at her mistress—and friend—with eyes that were almost frightened.

"Goodness me! Mrs. Marcia, you don't mean to tell me that Nathan Whitney wants to see me?"

"He asked for you, Miranda."

"Why Mrs. Marcia, you must be mistooken. What would he want of me? He must nv ast fer Mr. David."

"No, Mr. David went to the door," said Marcia smiling, "and he distinctly asked for Miss Griscom."

"Griscom Did he say that name? Didn't he say Mirandy? Then that settles it. It's sompin' 'bout that rascally father uv mine. I've ben expectin' it all along since I was old 'nough to think. But why didn't he go to Grandma? I couldn't do nothin'. Ur—D'you 'spose, Mrs. Marcia, it could be he's a lawin' fer Grandma, tryin' to fix it so's I hev to go back to her? He's a lawyer y'know. But Grandma wouldn't go to do a thing like that 'thout sayin' a thing to Mr. David, would she?”

Miranda's eyes were dilated, and her breath came fast. It seemed strange to Marcia to see the invincible Miranda upset this way.

"Why of course not, Miranda," she said soothingly. "It's likely nothing much. Maybe he's just come to ask you to look after his baby or something. He's seen how well you cared for Rose, and his baby isn't well. I heard to-day that his sister has to go home next week. Her laughter is going away to teach school this fall."

"Well, I ain't a reg'lar servant, I'll tell him that," said Miranda with a toss of her head, "an' ef I was, I wouldn't work fer him. He's got a pack of the meanest young ones ever walked this earth. They ought to be spanked, every one o' them. I’ll just go down an' let him know he's wasting his time comin' after me. Say, Mrs. Marcia, you don't want me to go, do you? You ain' tired of me, be you? 'Cause I kin go away, back to Gran'ma's ef you be, but I won't be shunted off onto Nathan Whitney."

Marcia assured her that it was the one dread of her life that Miranda would leave her and comforted, the girl descended to the parlor.

Nathan Whitney, tall, pale, thin, blue-eyed, scant-straw-colored of hair and eyebrow, angular of lip and cheek bone, unemotional of manner, came to his point at once in a tone so cold that it seemed to be a part of the November night sighing round the house.

Miranda, her freckled face gone white with excitement, her piquant, tip-tilted nose alert, her blue eyes under their red lashes keen as steel blades, and even her red hair waving back rampantly, sat and listened with growing animosity. She was like an angry lioness guarding her young, expecting momentarily to be torn away, yet intending to rend the hunter before he could accomplish his intention. Her love in this case was the little sleeping Rose upstairs in the cradle. Miranda did not tell him so, but she hated him for even suggesting anything that would separate her from that beloved baby. That this attempt came in the form of an offer of marriage did not blind her eyes to the real facts in the case. Therefore she listened coldly, drawing herself up with a new dignity as the brief and chilly declaration drew to its close, and her eyes flashed sparks at the calmly confident suitor.

Suddenly, before her gaze, had come the vision of his second wife not dead a year, brown eyes with golden glints and twinkles in them, but filled with sadness as if the life in them were slowly being crushed out; thin cheeks with a dash of crimson in their whiteness that looked as if at one time they might have dimpled in charming curves, lips all drooping that had yet a hint of cupid's bow in their bending. Her oldest boy with all his mischief looked like her, only he was bold and wicked in place of her sadness and submission. Miranda bursting with romance herself, had always felt for the ghost of young Mrs. Whitney's beauty, and wondered how such a girl came to be tied as second wife to a dried-up creature like Nathan Whitney. Therefore, Miranda held him with her eye until his well-prepared speech was done. Then she asked dryly:

"Mr. Whitney, did Mis' Whitney know you wuz cal'clatin' to git married right away agin fer a third time?”

A flush slowly rose from Nathan Whitney's stubbly upper lip and mounted to his high bare forehead, where it mingled into his scant straw-colored locks. His hands, which were thin and bony and showed the big veins like cords to tie the bones together, worked nervously on his knees.

"Just why should you ask that, Miss Griscom?” he demanded, his cold voice a trifle shaken.

"Wal, I thought 't might be," said Miranda nonchalantly, "I couldn't see no other reason why you should come fer me, ner why you should come so soon. 'Tain't skurcely decent, 'nless she 'ranged matters, made you promus. I've heard o' wives doin' thet frum jealousy, bein' so fond o' their lovin' husband thet they couldn't bear to hev him selec’ ’nuther. I thought she might a-picked me out ez bein' the onlikeliest she knowed to be fell in love with. Folks don't gen'lly pick out red hair an' freckles when they want to fall in love. I never knowed your fust wife but you showed sech good taste pickin' out the second, Mr. Whitney, couldn't ever think you didn't know I was homebley, n'less your eyesight's begun failin."

Nathan Whitney had flushed and paled angrily during this speech, but maintained his cold self-control.

"Miss Griscom, we will not discuss my wife. She was as she was, and she is now departed. Time goes slowly with the bereaved heart, and I have been driven to look around for a mother to my children. If it seems sudden to you, remember that I have a family to consider and must put my own feelings aside. Suffice it to say that I have been looking about for some time and I have noticed your devotion to the child your care in this household. I felt you would be thoroughly trustworthy to put in charge of my motherless children, and have therefore come to put the matter before you."

"Wal, you kin gather it right up agin and take home with you," said Miranda with a toss. "I wasn’t thinkin' of takin' no famblies to raise. I'm a free an' independent young woman who can earn her own livin', an' when I want to take a fambly to raise I'll go to the poor farm an' selec' one fer myself. At present I'm perfickly confort'ble a livin' with people 'at wants me fer myself. I don't hev to git married to some one thet would allus be thinkin' uv my red hair an' freckles, and my father that ran away——”

"Miss Griscom," said Nathan Whitney severely, "I thoroughly respect you, else I should not have made you the offer of my hand in marriage. You are certainly not responsible for the sins your father has committed, and as for your personal appearance, a meek and quiet spirit is often a better adorning——”

But Miranda's spirit could bear no more.

"Well, I guess you needn't go on any farther, Mr. Whitney. I ain't considerin' any sech offers at present, so I guess that ends it. Do you want I should git your ombrell? It's a rainy evenin', ain't it? That your coat? Want I should hep you on with it? Good even'n', Mr. Whitney. Mind thet bottom step, it gits slipp'ry now an' agin."

Miranda closed and bolted the front door hard, and stood with her back leaning against it in a relaxation of relief. Then suddenly she broke into clear merry laughter, and laughed so hard that Marcia came to the library door to see what was the matter.

"Golly! Mrs. Marcia, wha' d'ye think? I got a perposal. Me, with my red hair’n all, I got a perposal! I never 'spected it in the world, but I got it. Golly, ain't it funny?"

“Miranda!" said Marcia coming out into the hall and standing in dismayed amazement to watch her serving maid. "Miranda, what in the world do you mean?”

"Jest what I say," said Miranda. "He wanted to marry me so's I could look after his childern," and she bent double in another convulsion of laughter.

"He wanted you to marry him? And what did you tell him?" asked Marcia, scarcely knowing what to think as she eyed the strange girl in her mirth.

"I told him I had a job I liked better, 'r words to that effect," said Miranda suddenly sobering and wiping her eyes with her white apron. "Mrs. Marcia, you don't think I'd marry that slab-sided tombstun of a man ennyhow he'd fix it, do you? An' you ain't a-supposin' I'd leave you to tend that blessed baby upstairs all alone. Not while I got my senses, Mrs. Marcia. You jest go back in there to your readin' with Mr. David, an' I'll go set the buckwheats fer breakfast. But, Golly! Ain't it funny? Nathan Whitney perposin' to me! I'll be swithered!" and she vanished into the kitchen laughing.

It was the next morning, when she opened the shutters to the new fresh day with its bright cold air and business-like attitude of having begun the winter, that Miranda began those brief matinal surveys of the house across the way, taking it all in, from the gable ends with their little oriole windows, to the dreary flags that paved the way to the steps with the lofty pillared porch suggestive of aristocracy. It was an immense satisfaction to Miranda's red-haired, freckled-faced soul, to reflect that she might have been mistress of that mansion. It was not like thinking all her life that nobody wanted her, nobody would have her, and she could never be married because she would never be asked. She had been asked. She had had her chance and refused, and her bosom swelled with pride. She was here because she wanted to be here on this side of the street, but she might have been there in that other house if she had chosen. She might have been step-mother to that little horde of scared straw-colored girls, and naughty handsome boys who scuffled out of the gate now and then with fearful backward glances toward the house as if they were afraid of their lives, and never by any chance meant to do what they ought to if they could help it. The girls all looked like their drab-and-straw-colored father, but the boys were handsome little fellows with eyes like their mother and a hunted look about their faces. Miranda in her reflections always called them brats!

"The idea uv him thinkin' I'd swap my little Rose fer his spunky little brats! " That was always her ejaculation before she went in and shut the door.

Five separate times during the five years that had intervened, had Nathan Whitney taken his precise way across the street and preferred his request. In varied forms, and with ever-increasing fervor he had pressed his suit, until Miranda had come to believe in his sincere desire for her as a housekeeper, if not as a companion, and she held her head higher with pride, as the proposals increased and the years passed by. Day after day she swept the front stoop, and day after day looked over toward the big house across the way with the question to her soul, "You might uv. Ain't you sorry you didn't?" And always her soul responded, "No, I ain't!"

The last time he came Miranda had her final triumph, for he professed that he had conceived a sort of affection for her, in spite of her red hair and questionable parentage, and the girl had sense enough to see that the highest this man had to give he had laid at her feet. She was gracious, in her quaint way, but she sent him on his way with so decided a refusal that no man in his senses would ever attempt to ask her to marry him again; and after the deed had been done she surveyed her wholesome features in the mirror with entire satisfaction. Not a heartstring of her well-packed outfit had been stirred during the five years' courting, only her pride had been rippled pleasantly. But now she knew that it was over; no more could she look at the neglected home across the way and feel that any day she might step in and take possession. She had cut the cold man to his heart, what little chilly heart he had, and he would look her way no more, for she had dared to humble him to confessing affection, and then refused him after all. He would keep his well-trained affections in their place hereafter; and would look about in genuine earnest now to get a housekeeper and a mother for his wild flock which had been making rapid strides on the downward course while he was meandering through the toilsome ways of courtship.

Nathan Whitney looked about to such purpose that he was soon able to have his banns published in the church, and everybody at once began to say how altogether suitable and proper it was for Nathan Whitney to take another wife after all these five long years of waiting and mourning his sweet Eliza; and who in all that country round so fit as Maria Bent to deal with the seven wild unruly Whitneys, young and old. Had she not been mistress of the district school for well nigh twelve years gone, and had she not dealt with the Whitneys time and time again to her own glory and the undoing of their best laid scheme's ? Maria Bent was just the one, and Nathan Whitney had been a fool not to ask her before. Maybe she might have saved the oldest boy Allan from disgrace.

Strange to say, as soon as Miranda felt herself safe from becoming related to them, her heart softened toward the little Whitneys. Day after day as she swept the front stoop, after the banns had been published, and looked toward the great house which might have been hers, but by her own act had been put out of her life forever, she sighed and thought of the little Whitneys, and questioned her soul: "Could I? Ought I to uv?" but always her soul responded loyally, "No, you couldn't uv. No, you oughtn't uv. Think o' him! You never could uv stood him. Bah!"

And now on this morning of Maria Bent's wedding day Miranda came down with a whisk and a jerk, and flung the blinds on triumphantly. The deed was almost done, the time was nearly over. In a few more hours Maria Bent would walk that flagging up to the grand pillared porch and enter that mansion across the way to become its mistress ; and she, Miranda Griscom, would be Miranda Griscom still, plain, red-haired, freckled—and unmarried. No one would ever know, except her dear Mrs. Marcia and her adored Mr. David, that she had "hed the chancet an' never tuk it." Yet, Miranda, on her rival's wedding day, looked across at the great house, and sang, sang her joy of freedom.

"I might uv endured them brats, poor little hanted lookin' creatoors, but I never could a-stood that slab-sided, washed-out, fish-eyed man around, nohow you fixed it. My goody! Think o' them all 'long side o' my little Rose!”

And Miranda went into the house, slamming the door joyfully and singing. David upstairs shaving remarked to Marcia:

"Well, Miranda doesn't seem to regret her single blessedness as yet, dear."

Marcia, trying a bright ribbon on little Rose's curls, answered happily;

"And it's a good thing for us she doesn't. I wonder if she'll go to the wedding."

Miranda, later, after the breakfast was cleared away, announced her intention. "Yes, I'm goin' jest to show I ain't got no feelin's about it. 'Course she don't know. I don't s'pose he'd ever tell her, 'tain't like him. He's one o' them close, sly men thet think it's cost him somethin' ef he tells a woman ennythin', but I'm goin' jest fer my own satisfaction. Then 'course I'll own I'd kinder like to watch her an' think thet might o' ben me ef I'd ben willin' to leave little Rose, an' you an'—well, ef I'd a ben willin' which I never was. Yes, course I'm goin'"