Part 7 (1/2)
”No, of course not,” a.s.serted the other.
The girl bit her lip. The skipper thought that he had never seen her eyes so large and s.h.i.+ning. There was a long silence.
”Good-by,” said the girl at last, rising.
The skipper rose to follow. ”Good-by,” he said, slowly; ”and I wish you both every happiness.”
”Happiness?” echoed the girl, in a surprised voice. ”Why?”
”When you are married.”
”I am not going to be married,” said the girl, ”I told Bert so this afternoon. Good-by.”
The skipper actually let her get nearly to the top of the ladder before he regained his presence of mind. Then, in obedience to a powerful tug at the hem of her skirt, she came down again, and accompanied him meekly back to the cabin.
HIS LORDs.h.i.+P
FARMER ROSE sat in his porch smoking an evening pipe. By his side, in a comfortable Windsor chair, sat his friend the miller, also smoking, and gazing with half-closed eyes at the landscape as he listened for the thousandth time to his host's complaints about his daughter.
”The long and the short of it is, Cray,” said the farmer, with an air of mournful pride, ”she's far too good-looking.”
Mr. Cray grunted.
”Truth is truth, though she's my daughter,” continued Mr. Rose, vaguely.
”She's too good-looking. Sometimes when I've taken her up to market I've seen the folks fair turn their backs on the cattle and stare at her instead.”
Mr. Cray sniffed; louder, perhaps, than he had intended. ”Beautiful that rose-bush smells,” he remarked, as his friend turned and eyed him.
”What is the consequence?” demanded the farmer, relaxing his gaze. ”She looks in the gla.s.s and sees herself, and then she gets miserable and uppish because there ain't n.o.body in these parts good enough for her to marry.”
”It's a extraordinary thing to me where she gets them good looks from,”
said the miller, deliberately.
”Ah!” said Mr. Rose, and sat trying to think of a means of enlightening his friend without undue loss of modesty.
”She ain't a bit like her poor mother,” mused Mr. Cray.
”No, she don't get her looks from her,” a.s.sented the other.
”It's one o' them things you can't account for,” said Mr. Cray, who was very tired of the subject; ”it's just like seeing a beautiful flower blooming on an old cabbage-stump.”
The farmer knocked his pipe out noisily and began to refill it. ”People have said that she takes after me a trifle,” he remarked, shortly.
”You weren't fool enough to believe that, I know,” said the miller.
”Why, she's no more like you than you're like a warming-pan-not so much.”
Mr. Rose regarded his friend fixedly. ”You ain't got a very nice way o'