Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/332

 I were a painter, I should desire no lovelier scene for my canvas than that on which Mark and Mildred looked. Lizzy walked away, and began hunting checkerberries with an unusual ardor. She _did_ understand; she would not be Mademoiselle de Trop any longer. Kind soul! so unlike young women in general, who won't step aside gracefully, when they should! Further I can vouch, that she neither hemmed, nor made eyes, nor yet repeated the well-worn proverb, "Two's company, but three's none." No, she gathered berries and sang snatches of songs as though she were quite alone.

Now those of my readers who have the good-fortune still to linger in teens are expecting that I shall treat them to a report of this delightful _tête-à-tête_. But it must not be told. The older people would skip it, or say, "Pshaw!" And besides, if it were set down faithfully, you would be sadly disappointed; the cleverest men, even, are quite sure to appear silly (to other people) when in love. The speeches of the Romeos and Claude Melnottes, with which you have been so enchanted, would be common-place enough, if translated into the actual prose in which they were delivered. When Shakspeare wooed Anne Hathaway, it might have been different; but consider, you will wait some time before you find a lover like him. No, when your time comes, it will be soon enough. You will see your hero in his velvet cloak and plumed hat, with the splendor of scenery and the intoxication of the music. I don't choose to show him to you in morning dress at rehearsal, under daubed canvas and dangling machinery.

However full of poetry and passion Mark's declaration was for Mildred, to him it was tame and hesitating enough. It seemed to him that he could not force into the cold formula of words the emotion that agitated him. But with quickening breath he poured out his love, his hopes, and his fears,--the old burden! She trembled, her eyelids fell; but at length, roused by his pleading tones, she looked up. Their eyes met; one look was enough; it was a reciprocal electric flash. With a sudden energy he clasped her in his arms; and it was a very pretty tableau they made! But in the quick movement his heedless foot chanced to touch a stone, which rolled down the bank and fell into the stream with a splash. The charm was broken.

"What's that?" cried Lizzy from a distance, forgetting her discretion. "Did a pickerel jump?"

"No," replied Mark, "the pickerel know me of old, and don't come about for fear that I have a hook and line in my pocket. It was only a stone rolling into the river."

"You come here a moment," continued the unthoughtful Lizzy; "here's a beautiful sassafras sapling, and I can't pull it up by the roots alone."

"Send for the dentist, then."

"Go and help her," said Mildred, softly.

"Well," said Mark, with a look of enforced resignation,--"if I must."

The sapling grew on the steep bank, perhaps fifty yards from where he had been sitting. He did not use sufficient care to brace himself, as he pulled with all his might, and in a moment, he knew not how, he rolled down into the river. The girls first screamed, and then, as he came out of the water, shaking himself like a Newfoundland dog, they laughed immoderately. The affair did not seem very funny to Mark, and he joined in the laugh with no great heartiness. The shock had effectually dispelled all the romance of the hour.

"I'm so sorry!" said Lizzy, still laughing at his grotesque and dripping figure.

"You must hurry and get dry clothes on, Mark," said Mildred. "Squire Clamp's is the nearest house across the bridge."

"Hang Squire Clamp! his clothes would poison me. I'd as lief go to a quarantine hospital to be dressed."

"Don't!" said Lizzy.

But he kept on in the same mercurial strain.--"Clamp lives on poison, like Rappaccini's daughter, in Hawthorne's story; only it makes him ugly