Read Online Too Soon for Flowers by Margaret Miles - Free Book Online

soften you for a later savaging at the backgammon board—when he sees you have become thoroughly bored with the country. At any rate, Tucker, if you want something done for you about the place, you had better ask me first,” Longfellow concluded. “But go and learn the news, Yorick, so well have someone to pick apart at breakfast. Oh—and when Pratt brings your Madeira, you might ask him to invite Mr. Pelham to visit us tomorrow morning.”
    With a sphinx-like smile Cicero left them, dropping a soft leave-taking to Charlotte on his way to the door.
    “As you were talking of your neighbors, Mrs. Willett,” the physician then tried cautiously, “I will admit to being curious about one of them. I refer to Miss Morris.”
    “Phoebe Morris is from Concord, Dr. Tucker,” Mrs. Willett replied, “which is where most of her family can be found, I think. Do you know them?”
    “I am afraid not … yet I believe I did treat Miss Morris in Boston, briefly. Three years ago. She was barely sixteen—” Tucker broke off to sip from his replenished glass, before he continued. “You know little of her history, then?”
    “Very little, for she only came here recently.”
    “And yet she’s to be married, you say?”
    This time, Longfellow offered the answer. “The Sloans frequently trade goods with Concord farmers, several of them cousins, and the boy has probably visited that place quite often.”
    “He is a young man?”
    “Quite young. Now sixteen, I think?”
    Mrs. Willett nodded.
    “There could be certain advantages,” said Dr. Tucker, almost to himself.
    “In keeping a boy from worse? Quite possibly,” his host allowed, “especially when one has a habit of getting into trouble—though I believe the kind he’s headed for now will be new to Will Sloan.”
    “At least, Miss Morris will gain a protector from a dangerous world.”
    “Do you consider this place so?” Charlotte asked the doctor in surprise.
    “Beauty,” replied Tucker, “is ever under siege, I fear. As you must know yourself, madam,” he added gallantly.
    “Yet Aphrodite often finds means for having her own way,” Longfellow decided.
    “Not all of them pleasant,” muttered the physician. Then he shifted uncomfortably. There was a silence, but soon, Longfellow began to hum. He went to the pianoforte, and in a moment began to sing out in a light baritone, while his fingers moved over the keys to produce a martial air.
    “Love sounds the alarm,
And fear is a flying!
When beauty’s the prize,
What mortal fears dying?”
    While the singer shuffled and repeated Gay’s lines, as Handel’s somewhat newer tune required, Charlotte smiled toward Dr. Tucker, noticing as she did so that he seemed to take the song seriously.
    To sadder notes, Richard Longfellow went on with nicely calculated pathos.
    “
In defense of my treasure,
I’d bleed at each vein—
Without her no pleasure,
Fo life is a pain.
Without her no pleasure,
Without her no pleasure,
For life is a pain …
For life is a pain.”
    The physician’s face showed something like pain of its own, which was hardly merited by the performance, thought Charlotte. Longfellow, too, examined the physician with curiosity, once he had finished.
    “I see love disagrees with you tonight, Tucker!” his host declared. “Perhaps later, we might have a try at Bach. There is a great deal of mathematical interest in Bach, but very little passion.”
    Nodding, the physician reached for his glass once more.
    “I only thought,” Longfellow continued, “that you might enjoy the reference to blood-letting, as I believe you often work in that area—”
    In the middle of a sip, the doctor inhaled when he should have swallowed. Longfellow and Mrs. Willett watched him pitch forward convulsively, thrusting a handkerchief against his face as he suffered a fit of coughing.
    Longfellow hurried to his guest, and pounded him on the back until the other weakly raised a hand for his host to cease his