Part 61 (2/2)
”What shall we do?” said Cecil.
”Easily answered,” said Sam. ”Let her decide for herself. It may be, mind you, that she will have neither of us. There has been one living in the house with her lately, far superior in every point to you or I.
How if she thought fit to prefer him?”
”Halbert!”
”Yes, Halbert! What more likely? Let you and I find out the truth, Cecil, like men, and abide by it. Let each one ask her in his turn what chance he has.”
”Who first?”
”See here,” said Sam; ”draw one of these pieces of gra.s.s out of my hand. If you draw the longest piece ask her at once. Will you abide by this?”
He said ”yes,” and drew--the longest piece.
”That is well,” said Sam. ”And now no more of this at present. I will sling this poor little fellow in my blanket and carry him home to his mother. See, Cecil, what is Rover at?”
Rover was on his hind legs against the tree, smelling at something.
When they came to look, there was a wee little grey bear perched in the hollow of the tree.
”What a very strange place for a young bear!” said Cecil.
”Depend on it,” said Sam, ”that the child had caught it from its dam, and brought it up here. Take it home with you, Cecil, and give it to Alice.”
Cecil took the little thing home, and in time it grew to be between three and four feet high, a grandfather of bears. The magpie protested against his introduction to the establishment, and used to pluck billfulls of hair from his stomach under pretence of lining a nest, which was never made. But in spite of this, the good gentle beast lived nigh as long as the magpie--long enough to be caressed by the waxen fingers of little children, who would afterwards gather round their father, and hear how the bear had been carried to the mountains in the bosom of the little boy who lost his way on the granite ranges, and went to heaven, in the year that the bushrangers came down.
Sam carried the little corpse back in his blanket, and that evening helped the father to bury it by the river side. Under some fern trees they buried him, on a knoll which looked across the river, into the treacherous beautiful forest which had lured him to his destruction.
Alice was very sad for a day or two, and thought and talked much about this sad accident, but soon she recovered her spirits again. And it fell out, that a bare week after this, the party being all out in one direction or another, that Cecil saw Alice alone in the garden, tending her flowers, and knew that the time was come for him to keep his bargain with Sam and speak to her. He felt like a man who was being led to execution; but screwed his courage to the highest point, and went down to where she was tying up a rose-tree.
”Miss Brentwood,” he said, ”I am come to pet.i.tion for a flower.”
”You shall have a dozen, if you will,” she answered. ”Help yourself; will you have a peony or a sunflower? If you have not made up your mind, let me recommend a good large yellow sunflower.”
Here was a pretty beginning!
”Miss Brentwood, don't laugh at me, but listen to me a moment. I love you above all earthly things besides. I wors.h.i.+p the ground you walk on.
I loved you from the first moment I saw you. I shall love you as well, ay, better, if that could be, on the day my heart is still, and my hand is cold for ever: can you tell me to hope? Don't drive me, by one hasty half-considered word, to despair and misery for the rest of my life.
Say only one syllable of encouragement, and I will bide your time for years and years.”
Alice was shocked and stunned. She saw he was in earnest, by his looks, and by his hurried, confused way of speaking. She feared she might have been to blame, and have encouraged him in her thoughtlessness, more than she ought. ”I will make him angry with me,” she said to herself.
”I will treat him to ridicule. It is the only chance, poor fellow!”
”Mr. Mayford,” she said, ”if I thought you were in jest, I should feel it necessary to tell my father and brother that you had been impertinent. I can only believe that you are in earnest, and I deeply regret that your personal vanity should have urged you to take such an unwarrantable liberty with a girl you have not yet known for ten days.”
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