Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/626

 . 30, 1861.] prudence are the only happy ones; love-marriages always end in misery, hatred, and strife. I wonder a young woman of your judgment and discretion would let such a notion enter her head.”

“It is a fixed one with me for all that, Mr. Hubbs,” said Helen, “so perhaps that will reconcile you to my determination.”

“Determination! you are then determined to refuse me. Will you not take time for a little consideration before throwing away a chance, which, allow me to say, is not likely to happen to you again.”

“It would be of no use, Mr. Hubbs; nothing would make me change.”

Mr. Hubbs knit his brows, compressed his lips, and began to walk up and down the room.

“So positive!” he said, his anger rising fast. Suddenly he stopped before Helen, and looking her full in the face, while his eyes shot fire, he said:

“I'll tell you what, Miss Lennox, if your love notions have anything to do with Keefe Dillon, you’ll come to a great mistake, for he won’t have you. To my certain knowledge he's engaged to another person. I did think it was all idle gossip that was said about you and him, but I was a fool to imagine you wiser than the rest of your sex. I suppose you are waiting to see if he’ll take you one of these days, like ‘Patience on a monument,’ as they say in the play,” said Mr. Hubbs, with a brilliant attempt at wit, “but you'll turn into a monument yourself first, I can tell you. He saved another young lady’s life, as well as yours, miss, and he made love to her, too, and he promised to follow her to Quebec, and she promised to stay single for his sake. It's just such a love romance as you admire, but there’s more than romance in it on his side, for she’s to have a fine fortune, and Keefe knows better than to miss his chance of getting it. He’s not such a disinterested fool as I have been. So you’ve played your cards badly, and lost the game. I wish you good evening.”

He marched out of the schoolroom, banging the door behind him, and hurried up the street, walking over two or three little children who were playing in his path, and not taking the slightest notice of the numerous salutations he received as he passed along.

Helen had listened to his parting speech with apparent calmness, but when he was gone she stood for a few minutes as still as if all sense and feeling had left her. Mechanically she put on her bonnet and shawl, locked the school-house door, and walked to Mrs. Prior’s. Going into the room she bathed her face and hands, and smoothed her hair; then opening the letter Mr. Hubbs had given her, she read it, though without in the least comprehending its contents. She had just finished when Mrs. Prior called her to supper, and she obeyed the call much as one under the influence of a mesmerist might have done. In the same manner she answered the few words addressed to her by her taciturn companions, and when Faith Prior, remarking that she eat nothing, and that her face bore an expression of unusual weariness, brought her some new honey nin [sic] the comb which Mrs. Wendell had sent them that day, and kindly pressed her to eat, she tried to taste it but the effort was vain, and laying down her spoon with an involuntary shudder, she murmured something about feeling ill, and the fresh air doing her good, and hastily putting on her bonnet, left the house.

“Well, she do look dreadful had,” said Mrs. Prior. “I hope she ain't going to have a fever.”

“Oh, it is only tired she is with all those children,” said Faith; “and a hard time of it, she has, poor thing; but I hope her trials will be blessed to her, and lead her into the heavenly sheepfold.”

Helen followed the windings of the stream through the hollow till she reached the rocky little basin from which it sprung, where the water was always clear as crystal, and in the hottest weather cold as ice.

Her head throbbed painfully, and taking off her bonnet, she laved her forehead in the water of the well; its icy freshness cooled her brow, and seemed to clear away the bewildering sense of confusion and oppression which had rendered her incapable of thinking, and almost of feeling.

Did she indeed love Keefe Dillon, so well, that the thought of his loving another was more than she could bear?

As she asked herself this question a footstep reached her ears, and looking hastily round, she saw Keefe at her side.

was sitting in the stoup outside his door, trying to fix his thoughts on the book he held in his hand, instead of letting them wander to the cottage in the hollow, When Con Doyle came up to him.

“Pearson” (the blacksmith) “sent me to tell you that the drag is ready, sir, whenever you like to send for it.”

“Very well,” said Keefe; “I'll send for it tomorrow.”

But Con lingered, and after a little while, finding that Keefe said nothing more, he took courage to utter what his mind had been full of all the way from the village to Keefe’s house.

“I guess this would be a first-rate night for fishing, Mr. Dillon; there ain’t a curl on the water, and there's no moon to-night.”

“It looks as if it would be a good night,” said Keefe, laying down his book; and coming forwards, he looked out on the lake.

“I've got a lot of fat pine ready, and I'd fix up the jack, if you’d say you’d come, sir,” said Con, coaxingly.

“Well, perhaps I may. Con, does your little sister go to school every day?”

“Every day, sir, and sorry she’ll be if she has to leave off.”

“Why should she leave off? Your mother told me that she could do very well without her help.”

“Oh, it is not that, sir, but I'm thinking Miss Lennox would not teach school here very long.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Oh, I guess she'll soon be leaving Long Arrow.”

“Leaving Long Arrow? What do you mean?”