But that's not what I want to talk about now: it's a sort of secret. In the first place--"
"Do you usually mention your secrets in a voice that everybody can hear?" asked Mrs. Blyth, laughing.
"Oh, never mind about that," he replied, not lowering his tone in the least; "it's only a secret from Madonna, and we can talk before her, poor little soul, just as if she wasn't in the room. Now this is the thing: she's made me a present, and I think I ought to show my gratitude by making her another in return." (He resumed his ordinary manner as he warmed with the subject, and began to walk up and down the room in his usual flighty way.) "Well, I have been thinking what the present ought to be--something pretty, of course. I can't do her a drawing worth a farthing; and even if I could--"
"Suppose you come here and sit down, Zack," interposed Mrs. Blyth. "While you are wandering backwards and forwards in that way before the card-table, you take Madonna's attention off the game."
No doubt he did. How could she see him walking about close by her, and carrying her drawing with him wherever he went--as if he prized it too much to be willing to put it down--without feeling gratified in more than one of the innocent little vanities of her sex, without looking after him much too often to be properly alive to the interests of her game?
Zack took Mrs. Blyth's advice, and sat down by her, with his back towards the cribbage players.
"Well, the question is, What present am I to give her?" he went on. "I've been twisting and turning it over in my mind, and the long and the short of it is--"
("Fifteen two, fifteen four, and a pair's six," said Valentine, reckoning up the tricks he had in his hand at that moment.)
"Did you ever notice that she has a particularly pretty hand and arm?" proceeded Zack, somewhat evasively. "I'm rather a judge of these things myself; and of all the other girls I ever saw--"
"Never mind about other girls," said Mrs. Blyth. "Tell me what you mean to give Madonna."
("Two for his heels," cried Mrs. Peckover, turning up a knave with great glee.)
"I mean to give her a Bracelet," said Zack.
Valentine looked up quickly from the card table.
("Play, please sir," said Mrs. Peckover; "little Mary's waiting for you.")
"Well, Zack," rejoined Mrs. Blyth, "your idea of returning a present only errs on the side of generosity. I should recommend something less costly. Don't you know that it's one of Madonna's oddities not to care about jewelry? She might have bought herself a bracelet long ago, out of her own savings, if trinkets had been things to tempt her."
"Wait a bit, Mrs. Blyth," said Zack, "you haven't heard the best of my notion yet: all the pith and marrow of it has got to come. The bracelet I mean to give her is one that she will prize to the day of her death, or she's not the affectionate, warm-hearted girl I take her for. What do you think of a bracelet that reminds her of you and Valentine, and jolly old Peck there--and a little of me, too, which I hope won't make her think the worse of it. I've got a design against all your heads," he continued, imitating the cutting action of a pair of scissors with two of his fingers, and raising his voice in high triumph. "It's a splendid idea: I mean to give Madonna a Hair Bracelet!"
Mrs. Peckover and Mr. Blyth started back in their chairs, and stared at each other as amazedly as if Zack's last words had sprung from a charged battery, and had struck them both at the same moment with a smart electrical shock.
"Of all the things in the world, how came he ever to think of giving her that!" ejaculated Mrs. Peckover under her breath; her memory reverting, while she spoke, to the mournful day when strangers had searched the body of Madonna's mother, and had found the Hair Bracelet hidden away in a corner of the dead woman's pocket.
"Hush! let's go on with the game," said Valentine. He, too, was thinking of the Hair Bracelet--thinking of it as it now lay locked up in his bureau down stairs, remembering how he would fain have destroyed it years ago, but that his conscience and sense of honor forbade him; pondering on the fatal discoveries to which, by bare possibility, it might yet lead, if ever it should fall into strangers' hands.
"A Hair Bracelet," continued Zack, quite unconscious of the effect he was producing on two of the card-players behind him; "and such hair, too, as I mean it to be made of!--Why, Madonna will think it more precious than all the diamonds in the world. I defy anybody to have hit on a better idea of the sort of present she's sure to like; it's elegant and appropriate, and all that sort of thing--isn't it?"
"Oh, yes! very nice and pretty indeed," replied Mrs. Blyth, rather absently and confusedly. She knew as much of Madonna's history as her husband did; and was wondering what he would think of the present which young Thorpe proposed giving to their adopted child.
"The thing I want most to know," said Zack, "is what you think would be the best pattern for the bracelet. There will be two kinds of hair in it, which can be made into any shape, of course--your hair and Mrs. Peckover's."
("Not a morsel of my hair shall go towards the bracelet!" muttered Mrs. Peckover, who was listening to what was said, while she went on playing.)
"The difficult hair to bring in, will be mine and Valentine's," pursued Zack. "Mine's long enough, to be sure; I ought to have got it cut a month ago; but it's so stiff and curly; and Blyth keeps his cropped so short--I don't see what they can do with it (do you?), unless they make rings, or stars, or knobs, or something stumpy, in the way of a cross pattern of it."
"The people at the shop will know best," said Mrs. Blyth, resolving to proceed cautiously.
"One thing I'm determined on, though, beforehand," cried Zack,--"the clasp. The clasp shall be a serpent, with turquoise eyes, and a carbuncle tail; and all our initials scored up somehow on his scales. Won't that be splendid? I should like to surprise Madonna with it this very evening."
("You shall never give it to her, if I can help it," grumbled Mrs. Peckover, still soliloquizing under her breath. "If anything in this world can bring her ill-luck, it will be a Hair Bracelet!")
These last words were spoken with perfect seriousness; for they were the result of the strongest superstitious conviction.
From the time when the Hair Bracelet was found on Madonna's mother, Mrs. Peckover had persuaded herself--not unnaturally, in the absence of any information to the contrary--that it had been in some way connected with the ruin and shame which had driven its unhappy possessor forth as an outcast, to die amongst strangers. To believe, in consequence, that a Hair Bracelet had brought "ill-luck" to the mother, and to derive from that belief the conviction that a Hair Bracelet would therefore also bring "ill-luck" to the child, was a perfectly direct and inevitable deductive process to Mrs. Peckover's superstitious mind. The motives which had formerly influenced her to forbid her "little Mary" ever to begin anything important on a Friday, or ever to imperil her prosperity by walking under a ladder, were precisely the motives by which she was now actuated in determining to prevent the presentation of young Thorpe's ill-omened gift.