Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/37

1857.] from Long Snapps's pipe, and the resolve of last night came back; her face relented, and George, seeing it, used his utmost persuasiveness; so the result was, that Sally washed her hands at the well, and away they went, in the most serene silence, over fences, grass-lots, and ditches, through bits of woodland, and fields of winter-green, till they reached the edge of the great meadow, and sat down on a log to rest. It was rather a good place for that purpose. An old pine had fallen at the feet of a majestic cluster of its brethren, so close that the broad column of one made a natural back to part of the seat. The ground was warm, dry sand, strown with the fine dead leaves of past seasons, brown and aromatic. A light south wind woke the voices of every bough above, and the melancholy susurrus rose and fell in delicate cadences; while beyond the green meadow, Westbury River, a good-sized brook, babbled and danced as if there were no pine-tree laments in the world.

I believe the air, and the odor, and the crying wind drove the violets quite out of both the two heads that drooped silently over that pine log. If Sally had been nervous or poetical, she would have been glad to recollect them; but no such morbidness invaded her healthy soul. She sat quite still till George said, in a suppressed and rather broken tone,—

"I was sorry to vex you last night, Sally! I could not be sorry for any thing else."

"You did grieve me very much, Mister George," said Sally, affecting a little distance in her address, but sufficiently tender in manner.

"Well, I suppose you don't see it the way I do," returned George; "and I am very sorry, for I had rather please you than any body else."

This was especially tender, and he possessed himself of Sally's little red hand, unaware or careless that it smelt of onions; but it was withdrawn very decidedly.

"I think you take a strange way of showing your liking!" sniffed the damsel.

George sat astounded. Another tiny spider-thread stopped the fly; a subtle ray of blue sped sideways out of Sally's eye, that meant,—"I don't object to be liked."

"I wish with all my heart I knew any good way to please you," he fervently ejaculated.

"I should think any way to please people was a good way," retorted Sally, saying more with her eyes than with her voice,—so much more, that in fact this fly was fast. A little puff of wind blew off Sally's bonnet; she looked shy, flushed, lovely. George stood up on his feet, and took his hat off.

"Sally!" said he, in the deepest notes of his full, manly voice, "I love you very much indeed; will you be my wife?"

Sally was confounded. I rejoice to say she was quite confounded; but she was made of revolutionary stuff, and what just now interfered with her plans and schemes was the sudden discovery how very much indeed she loved George Tucker; a fact she had not left enough margin for in her plot.

But, as I said, she was made of good metal, and she answered very low,—

"I do like you, George; but I never will marry a Britisher and a Tory."

A spasm of real anguish distorted the handsome face, bent forward to listen.

"Do you mean that, Sally? Can't you love me because we don't think alike?"

Sally choked a little; her tones fell to a whisper. George had to sit down close to her to hear.

"I didn't say I didn't love you, George!"—A blissful pause of a second; then in a clear, cold voice,—"But my mind's set. I can't marry a Britisher and a Tory, if I died sayin' so."

George gasped.

"And I cannot turn traitor and rebel, Sally. I can not. I love you better than any thing in the world; but I can't do a wicked thing; no, not even for you."

He was pale as death. Sally's secret heart felt proud of him, and never had she been so near repenting of her work