The Secret Bliss of Calliope Ipswich (16 page)

“Give it a rest, Fox,” Dex grumbled. “We know, we know—there’s no good reason on earth for Judge Ipswich to have told you no. But he did. So shut up and get on with the day. My ears are achin’ over your whinin’ about it all mornin’.”

“Mine too,” Tate agreed.

Fox’s eyes narrowed. “I know what the two of you are thinkin’. I ain’t stupid. You’re both thinkin’ that since I got turned down by Calliope’s father, then that leaves her for the two of you to have a go at. But it doesn’t! She’s still my girl. You hear me?”

“She was never your girl,” Dex argued. “Did Calliope even want you to talk to her daddy about courtin’ her?”

Fox straightened his shoulders indignantly. “She didn’t have to. Every girl in this town wants me to ask
her daddy if I can court her.”

Dex and Tate both shook their heads with disgust. Even Rowdy’s eyebrows arched with his wonder at Fox’s conceit.

“You might want to simmer down that ego a bit, Fox,” he began, “before that swelled head of yours explodes.”

Fox glared at Rowdy, but Rowdy just exhaled a sigh of annoyance and said, “Let’s get back to work here, boys. We’re fallin’ behind.”

“All right, boss,” Tate agreed. Dex nodded as well.

Fox, however, stood glaring at Rowdy a moment. Finally he asked, “Don’t you think the judge was wrong to refuse me?”

Rowdy looked Fox straight in the eyes and answered, “I think a good man who’s also a good father knows…well, I figure he knows what’s right for his daughter and when.”

Fox huffed a breath of frustration.

“Settle it down, Fox,” Rowdy encouraged. “Things have a way of workin’ themselves out for the best.” He cleared his throat, adding, “But next time, maybe make sure the girl
wants
you to ask her daddy to come courtin’ her…
before
you go askin’.”

Glaring at Rowdy a moment, Fox eventually turned and stormed off to move some sacks of flour.

“That’s what he gets for thinkin’ he’s the sweet cream in every milk bucket,” Dex whispered to Rowdy as he passed him.

Rowdy didn’t respond with more than a mild, almost imperceptible nod—but he wholeheartedly agreed with Dex. Fox Montrose was way too fond of himself—and if the truth be told, Rowdy was elated that Judge Ipswich had refused his permission for Fox to court Calliope. For one thing, it verified to Rowdy the truth of what little Shay Ipswich had told him the day before—that Calliope herself had actually asked her father to refuse Fox’s proposal of courtship.
It might also have proved that the youngest Ipswich gypsy wasn’t completely loco when she’d told him that Calliope had wanted Rowdy to kiss her.

Rowdy shook his head
, rattling his brains back to reality. His thoughts where Calliope was concerned were as foolish as Fox’s assumptions had been.

Still, one thing he couldn’t lie to himself about—and that was the fact that he was purely jubilant in knowing that Fox Montrose had no real claim to Calliope. Therefore, as Fox continued to mope around the mill, muttering angrily to himself, Rowdy unconsciously took to whistling a happy tune.

*

“Ladies,” Calliope said as she stood in the center of Dora Montrose’s parlor
, “I’d like to make an announcement.”

“Oh, for
Pete’s sake, Calliope,” Evangeline mumbled, blushing with humiliation.

But Calliope was undaunted. “I’m pleased to tell you all that my own very sweet sister Evangeline here…well, she’s managed to convince Floyd Longfellow to allow Mamie and Effie to take part in our Tom Thumb
wedding as the flower girls!”

Every woman in the room applauded and squealed with delight.

“Oh, however did you manage it, Evangeline?” Winnie asked.

“Yes
, I can hardly believe it! Mr. Longfellow is so severe,” Blanche chimed in. “I’m afraid to even look him in the eye, let alone ask him anything…especially somethin’ the likes of this!”

But Evangeline shrugged. “I-I don’t quite know why he agreed,” she admitted. “I did take the time to explain everything to him
, all the details and things. I noted that I thought it would be a good experience for Mamie and Effie—you know, something to help them get to know the other children in town.” She shrugged again and added, “And before I knew it, he’d agreed to allow the girls to participate.”

“Maybe Mr. Longfellow is a bit sweet on you, Evangeline,” Pauline suggested.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Pauline,” her sister Callie laughed. “Mr. Longfellow is old enough to be Evangeline’s father, for heaven’s sake!”

“My father married Kizzy,” Calliope kindly pointed out
, “and he’s old enough to be her father.”

“But that’s different, Calliope,” Callie suggested.

“How so?” Dora Montrose asked.

Callie shrugged. “Well…because Judge Ipswich is so wildly handsome! It makes sense he would win the heart of a younger woman.”

“Well, I think Mr. Longfellow is quite nice looking,” Evangeline said.

Callie seemed to ponder the statement for a moment. Then she nonchalantly shrugged and said, “I suppose he is. But I still wouldn’t want to marry a man old enough to be my father.”

“I find that older men are quite often far more attractive than younger ones,” Blanche’s mother, Judith, said. “Why, Mr. Gardener is a full ten years older than I am.”

“It’s not such a bad idea, now that I think about it,” Josephine Chesterfield commented. “You’d make a fine wife to a man in need of a woman to raise two little girls, Evangeline.”

Evangeline blushed, and Calliope leapt to her rescue.

“Anyway,” Calliope began, “the point of it all is…we have our little flower girls assured us.”

Everyone smiled and nodded with satisfaction.

“Now, Mrs. Ackerman,” Calliope began then, addressing Sallie’s mother
, “what did Warren say when you explained the
entire
script to him? You simply
must
convince him to kiss the bride at the end of the ceremony!”

Ellen Ackerman exchanged amused glances with her daughter, Sallie. “Oh, don’t you worry a bit, Calliope,” she said. “When I told
Warren that he was expected to kiss Shay—to kiss the bride, so to speak—his response was, ‘Good! I can’t wait!’”

Everyone burst into laughter once more
, and Calliope and Evangeline clasped hands with excitement.

“It’s going to be so wonderful, Evie!” Calliope sighed with glad anticipation.

“Wonderful!” Evangeline agreed.

*

“And Evie really convinced Mr. Longfellow to let Mamie and Effie be in the play?” Shay asked as she and Calliope sat on the old fallen log that spanned the stream.

“Yes!” Calliope confirmed. She shook her head in awed disbelief. “I don’t know how Evangeline managed it
, but somehow she persuaded him.”

Shay smiled. “It’s because Mr. Longfellow is sweet on Evangeline,” she stated.

Calliope looked to Shay in astonishment. “Why do you say that, Shay Shay?”

Shay shrugged. “Because I can see it. Mr. Longfellow stares at Evangeline anytime she’s around him…like every Sunday in church. I’m surprised no one else has noticed.”

Calliope considered what Shay was saying. Was it true? Did Floyd Longfellow stare at Evangeline whenever he was in her presence? The truth was that at church Calliope was always too distracted trying to catch every glimpse she could of Rowdy Gates. Could it be that she’d been so preoccupied by Rowdy every Sunday that she’d never noticed Mr. Longfellow staring at her own sister?

“Hmmm,” she sighed suddenly. “Maybe you’re right, Shay. Maybe Mr. Longfellow is sweet on Evangeline. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time a man had his eye on a woman quite a lot young than himself, now would it?” She giggled and nudged Shay with her arm.

Shay laughed. “You mean like Daddy and Mama,” she noted.

“That’s just what I mean,” Calliope said.

Calliope and Shay sat quietly for a few moments, dangling their toes in the stream’s cool water babbling beneath the log on which they sat.

They each heard a tiny splash
, and Shay exclaimed, “There goes another one! Oh, I just love baby frogs.”

“Me too,” Calliope agreed. “By the time you get married in a few weeks, all the baby frogs will be big, slimy toads. Let’s catch a few now, while the
y’re little. What do you say?”

Shay nodded with enthusiasm. She paused for an instant, however,
and then said, “You know that it’s just a pretend weddin’, right, Calliope? I’m not really marryin’ Warren Ackerman.”

Calliope smiled. She understood that Shay needed reassurance that the Tom Thumb
wedding was simply a play—that nothing at all about it was real or binding.

“Of course, Shay,” she assured her little sister. She giggled, adding, “The only
real
thing about it is the kiss you’ll receive from Warren Ackerman!”

Shay blushed and grinned. But her smile faded as she asked, “But what if
Warren won’t kiss me at the weddin’? Oh, I’ll be so embarrassed if he won’t!”

Calliope put her arm around Shay’s slight shoulders. “Don’t worry, my angel. He will kiss you. I happen to know for a fact that he can’t
wait
to kiss you!”

Shay’s eyes widened. “How do you know that for a fact?”

Calliope arched one eyebrow and answered, “I have my ways.” She giggled. “Now, let’s go catch some baby frogs before they turn into big, slimy ones, all right?”

Again Shay nodded with emphatic agreement.

Taking Shay’s hand, Calliope helped her to stand on the log and then followed suit. Carefully they walked across the log back to the bank of the stream.

“I’ve seen so many jump into the water from just here,” Shay said, dashing to a spot on the bank near a grove of cattails.

“Well, then that’s where we should start looking,” Calliope said, following her.

Rowdy continued to observe Calliope as she hunted for frogs with her little sister. All day the reality had bounced around in his mind—the fact that Judge Ipswich had not granted his permission for Fox Montrose to court Calliope. Unlike Fox, who was still seething with indignation when he left the mill to ride around a bit and clear his head during the midday break for lunch, Rowdy had wandered to the meadow—to the hill that overlooked the stream.

When he’d seen Calliope and her sister sitting on the fallen tree that spanned the stream, allowing their toes to skim across the water’s surface, he’d found himself a comfortable place to sit down in the grass. There he’d eaten his baked potato as he’d listened to their giggling and watched them talking to one another.

Evangeline wasn’t with them this day, and they’d apparently traded their pretending at being ponies for hunting for frogs. It made Rowdy happy to think that the lovely, graceful Calliope Ipswich still enjoyed such things as dangling her toes in the stream and catching frogs.

“So…Fox ain’t gonna be courtin’ Calliope, hmm?” Rowdy mumbled to himself. He remember what Fox had told Dex and Tate at the mill earlier in the day—that they better not think they could be throwing their hats in the ring for Calliope
’s affections just because the judge had refused to let Fox court her. But Rowdy Gates had a hat too—didn’t he? And didn’t he also have the revelations of a cute little gypsy girl to guide him along as well? What if Calliope really had wanted him to kiss her when she’d kissed him the day before? What if there was even the smallest idea of a chance that she could care for him? Shouldn’t he pursue her as earnestly as he knew Dex and Tate no doubt planned to do?

Before he could think to stop himself, Rowdy had stood
and mounted Tucker and was riding down the hillside toward the place where Calliope Ipswich and her sister were hunting frogs.

He was nearly upon them when his courage began to fail. In fact, he reined Tucker to a stop and planned to turn the horse around and ride toward the mill. But it was too late
, for Shay Ipswich had spied him and was now waving her little arm and hand frantically in motioning that he should ride to meet her and her sister.

What had he been thinking? As Rowdy reined in near Calliope and Shay, he wondered if he hadn’t momentarily lost his mind. But he was there now—right there with them. He couldn’t just ride away. What would Calliope think of him if he did?

“We’re catchin’ baby frogs, Mr. Gates,” Shay announced. “Calliope says she’d rather catch them now when they’re cute little babies
, instead of later in the summer when they’re big and slimy.”

Calliope blushed all the way from her forehead to the tips of her toes when Rowdy Gates chuckled at what Shay had told him.

She was surprised, however, when he said, “Well, that’s a good idea. ’Cause even if the slime don’t bother you, you can’t sail frogs when they get big.”

“Sail them?” Calliope heard herself ask in unison with Shay.

“What do you mean you can’t sail them when they get big?” Shay asked. The curiosity gleaming in her eyes was as bright as a summer sunrise.