"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 shining. 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 LORDSHIP
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"
putting things, Cray," he said, mournfully.
"I"m no flatterer," said the miller; "never was, and you can"t please everybody. If I said your daughter took after you I don"t s"pose she"d ever speak to me again."
"The worst of it is," said the farmer, disregarding his remark, "she won"t settle down. There"s young Walter Lomas after her now, and she won"t look at him. He"s a decent young fellow is Walter, and she"s been and named one o" the pigs after him, and the way she mixes them up together is disgraceful."
"If she was my girl she should marry young Walter," said the miller, firmly. "What"s wrong with him?"
"She looks higher," replied the other, mysteriously; "she"s always reading them romantic books full o" love tales, and she"s never tired o"
talking of a girl her mother used to know that went on the stage and married a baronet. She goes and sits in the best parlor every afternoon now, and calls it the drawing-room. She"ll sit there till she"s past the marrying age, and then she"ll turn round and blame me."
"She wants a lesson," said Mr. Cray, firmly. "She wants to be taught her position in life, not to go about turning up her nose at young men and naming pigs after them."
"What she wants to understand is that the upper cla.s.ses wouldn"t look at her," pursued the miller.
"It would be easier to make her understand that if they didn"t," said the farmer.
"I mean," said Mr. Cray, sternly, "with a view to marriage. What you ought to do is to get somebody staying down here with you pretending to be a lord or a n.o.bleman, and ordering her about and not noticing her good looks at all. Then, while she"s upset about that, in comes Walter Lomas to comfort her and be a contrast to the other."
Mr. Rose withdrew his pipe and regarded him open-mouthed.
"Yes; but how-" he began.
"And it seems to me," interrupted Mr. Cray, "that I know just the young fellow to do it-nephew of my wife"s. He was coming to stay a fortnight with us, but you can have him with pleasure-me and him don"t get on over and above well."
"Perhaps he wouldn"t do it," objected the farmer.
"He"d do it like a shot," said Mr. Cray, positively. "It would be fun for us and it "ud be a lesson for her. If you like, I"ll tell him to write to you for lodgings, as he wants to come for a fortnight"s fresh air after the fatiguing gayeties of town."
"Fatiguing gayeties of town," repeated the admiring farmer. "Fatiguing-"
He sat back in his chair and laughed, and Mr. Cray, delighted at the prospect of getting rid so easily of a tiresome guest, laughed too.
Overhead at the open window a third person laughed, but in so quiet and well-bred a fashion that neither of them heard her.
The farmer received a letter a day or two afterwards, and negotiations between Jane Rose on the one side and Lord Fairmount on the other were soon in progress; the farmer"s own composition being deemed somewhat crude for such a correspondence.
"I wish he didn"t want it kept so secret," said Miss Rose, pondering over the final letter. "I should like to let the Crays and one or two more people know he is staying with us. However, I suppose he must have his own way."
"You must do as he wishes," said her father, using his handkerchief violently.
Jane sighed. "He"ll be a little company for me, at any rate," she remarked. "What is the matter, father?"
"Bit of a cold," said the farmer, indistinctly, as he made for the door, still holding his handkerchief to his face. "Been coming on some time."
He put on his hat and went out, and Miss Rose, watching him from the window, was not without fears that the joke might prove too much for a man of his habit. She regarded him thoughtfully, and when he returned at one o"clock to dinner, and encountered instead a violent dust-storm which was raging in the house, she noted with pleasure that his sense of humor was more under control.