Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20.djvu/554

546 adwantage of position,—I waulted down the tother side; and there we hung balanced into the air, and there we would have hung all night but for the accident of the rewival.

"When they cut us down,—which one of the rewival folks did with his jack-knife,—I woluntarily fainted away, and was carried in for dead, and did n't rewive, and would n't rewive, for hours ind hours. La me! I was so ashamed!"

"I wish it had been my forten to carry you into the house," says John.

"So do I," says the widow; "but let us be thankful that the wicissitudes of life have driv us together at last"

"At last, sure enough," says John; "you speak wisdom when you don't know on 't, you dove of doves!"

She bent her eyes upon him in tender inquiry, in answer to which he said, "At last it is, sweetheart, for you don't know that I loved you when I was a youngster not more 'n a dozen year old!"

"Loved me, captain! It is n't creditable! Tell me all about it. Are you sure?"

"Just as sure on 't as I be of anything; just as sure as I be that I love you now."

"Tell me all about it, I 'm dying to know; it seems like some wild novelty, to be sure."

"Yes, you 're right, it is like a novelty if it was only writ out, and it do n't seem creditable, but it 's true; I 'm just as sure on 't as I be of anything,—just as sure as I be that I love you now!"

"O captain!"

"Yes, my own Rose, I loved you when I was a little lad,—loved you just as I did the mornin' star,—loved you and worshipped you from far away. What a spry little thing you was, a-hoppin' about among the mahogany and walnut stuff like a young sparrer! O, how I 've watched and follered you with my eyes when you did n't dream on 't!"

"But, John, my nerves are a woman's, remember, and you mustn't keep them a-strain so long; they 're wery much weakened by all this."

"Ay, to be sure," says John; "your nerves be a woman's, to say nothin' of your curosity bein' a woman's!"

And he laughed with as much heartiness at her expense as though she had been his wife already.

"John!" This with tender reproach, and he resumed, in a tone of respectful and lover-like humility.

"Wa' n't your name Rose Rollins afore you was jined to the vagabond,—wagabond, that is to say,—afore you was dethroned; and did n't you live in Fust Street, opposite them old tenement housen knowed as Baker's Row?"

"Of course I did, John, in the yaller brick with the shop in the corner, and the entrance embellished with a beautiful sign,—three coffins, with their leds turned back so as to reweal the satin linin's, and my father's name in letters that represented silver screws! A stroke of genius that design was!—the sign of the three coffins, two of them sideways and one end; my father's name—Farewell Rollins, wery appropriate to his business as it turned out—in letters that they was modelled after silver screws."

"Three on 'em, two sideways and one end?" says John; "and the name, Farewell Rollins, shaped arter silver screws! Why, as you be a livin' cretur, you 're the very—wery—little gal I was in love with; and many a day, dark enough otherwise with poverty and sorrer, you 've lighted up with your purty golden head!" And then he tells her, by way of illustrating the depth and sincerity of his early attachment, that it once happened to him to have an orange given him at Christmas time; and that, although he had never tasted an orange in all his born days, except through a confectioner's window-glass, he without hesitation tossed it over the wall into her father's yard, hoping that she, who ate oranges every day, might possibly have his added to the rest. And he concluded with, "Such was the nater of my feelin's for you even then."

"And the nater of your feelin's, John, was not only wergin' close upon