The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cupid's Understudy, by Edward Salisbury Field

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Title: Cupid's Understudy

Author: Edward Salisbury Field

Posting Date: April 20, 2009 [EBook #3602]
Release Date: January, 2003
First Posted: June 6, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CUPID'S UNDERSTUDY

by

Edward Salisbury Field

Chapter One

If Dad had been a coal baron, like Mr. Tudor Carstairs, or a
stock-watering captain of industry, like Mrs. Sanderson-Spear's husband,
or descended from a long line of whisky distillers, like Mrs.
Carmichael Porter, why, then his little Elizabeth would have been
allowed the to sit in seat of the scornful with the rest of the Four
Hundred, and this story would never have been written. But Dad
wasn't any of these things; he was just an old love who had made
seven million dollars by the luckiest fluke in the world.

Everybody in southern California knew it was a fluke, too, so the
seven millions came in for all the respect that would otherwise have
fallen to Dad. Of course we were celebrities, in a way, but in a
very horrid way. Dad was Old Tom Middleton, who used to keep a
livery-stable in San Bernardino, and I was Old Tom Middleton's girl,
"who actually used to live over a livery-stable, my dear!" It sounds
fearfully sordid, doesn't it?

But it wasn't sordid, really, for I never actually lived over a
stable. Indeed, we had the sweetest cottage in all San Bernardino. I
remember it so well: the long, cool porch, the wonderful gold-of-Ophir
roses, the honeysuckle where the linnets nested, the mocking
birds that sang all night long; the perfume of the jasmine, of the
orange-blossoms, the pink flame of the peach trees in April, the
ever-changing color of the mountains. And I remember Ninette, my
little Creole mother, gay as a butterfly, carefree as a meadow-lark.
'Twas she who planted the jasmine.

My little mother died when I was seven years old. Dad and I and my
old black mammy, Rachel, stayed on in the cottage. The m