Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 162.djvu/157

Rh Danelo for having kissed her, yet somehow she did not care to hear that he would have been as ready to commit this heinous offence in the case of old Katinka. Therefore she tried to keep up her dignity for a little longer, and told herself that Danelo must have become a very wicked man during these three years of absence. She would not even admire his bright scarlet facings, which were putting the poppies to shame, nor his shining boots, nor his glittering sword; but she could not help acknowledging to herself that the man Danelo was handsomer far than the boy Danelo had been.

Stern moralizing ill suited her age, and reproving words coming from coral lips sounded strangely out of place. No doubt Magda felt this herself; for when at last Danelo, looking up at her with his frankly impudent gaze, said, "Come, Magda, you have scolded me quite enough; I will be good, and never do it again. Surely you will bid me welcome now? I have had no welcome as yet. And you will let me rest a while on your bench, for I am footsore and weary?" she was fain to lay aside her unnatural rôle and extend her hand half grudgingly in tardy welcome; and though he did not look either footsore or weary, she could not do otherwise than grant him a place on the bench.

The same bench, which had seemed to her so uselessly wide only half an hour before, now seemed to have suddenly narrowed its dimensions; for the green cloth uhlanka was continually brushing against Madga's linen sleeve, and her bare foot more than once came in contact with the rude steel spur. In eager conversation time flew by rapidly, there was so much to ask and tell on both sides: the births, deaths, and marriages of the parish for the last three years; the result of the harvests; the innovations in road and forest. Then there were old reminiscences to be exchanged and memories to be refreshed; so that when, an hour later, Filip, leaving the shed where it had now become too dark to work, re-entered the garden, he found them still deep in such conversation as this: "Do you remember, Magda, the year the wheat grew on the low meadow near the river?" Or, "Danelo, have you forgotten the evening we danced in the barn?" Or, "How wet we got the day we gathered the hazel-nuts!"

Kuba and Kasza now appearing on the scene, remained rooted to the spot in mute admiration of this dazzling visitor, in his showy lancer uniform.

"Are those your children, Magda?" asked Danelo abruptly.

"Nonsense, Danelo!" said Magda, with heightened color. "Do not you see that they cannot be mine? Kuba and Kasza are nearly seven years old, and I have been married but half that time."

"How am I to know what a child of three years looks like?" answered Danelo, laughing, and showing all his even white teeth. "I never look at children. I only know that it seems an age since I saw you last, and that anything might have happened since then."

"It is time for the children to be put to bed," now remarked Filip, somewhat churlishly. He had taken no part in the conversation as yet.

Magda rose hastily and entered the house.

From The British Quarterly Review. DICTIONARY-MAKING. PAST AND PRESENT.

The recent issue of the first part of The "New English Dictionary" marks an epoch in English dictionary-making. Since Henry Cockeram in 1623 published his " Alphabeticall and English Expositor" of "vulgar words," English dictionaries of many kinds and sizes have poured from the press. And yet no complete work of the kind has hitherto made even a distant approach to the ideal.

It is needful here at the outset to remark that in what is said in the following pages there is no desire whatever to depreciate the labors of previous workers in this field. The names of Bailey, Johnson, Todd, Richardson, Webster, and a host of others, have long deserved, and ever will deserve, the gratitude of English scholars. But it is no disparagement of their efforts to point out that they were unable to produce a work for which they had not the material, viz., an English dictionary really worthy of the name.

But now there is a solid basis for the hope that before many years have passed LIVING AGE.