Page:The New Penelope.djvu/243



The only affair which seemed to have a kernel of seriousness in it, was that of Mr. Samuel Rice. Regularly, when the stage was in, on Sam's night, he paid his respects to Mrs. Page. And Mrs. Page always received him with a graceful friendliness, asking after the horses, and even sometimes going so far as to accompany him to their stables. On these occasions she never failed to carry several lumps of sugar in her pocket, which she fed to the handsome brutes off her own pink palm, until there was not one of them she could not handle at her will.

Thus passed many weeks, until summer was drawing to a close. Two or three times she had gone down to Piney-woods Station and back, on Sam's coach, and always sat on the box, and drove a part of the way, but never where her driving would excite remark. It is superfluous to state, that on these occasions there was a happy heart beneath Sam's linen-duster, or that the bantering remarks of his brother-drivers were borne with smiling equanimity, not to say pride; for Sam was well aware that Mrs. Dolly Page's brunette beauty, and his blonde-bearded style, together furnished a not unpleasing tableau of personal charms. Besides, Sam's motto was, "Let those laugh who win;" and he seemed to himself to be on the road to heights of happiness beyond the ken of ordinary mortals—especially ordinary stage-drivers.

"I don't calkelate to drive stage more than a year or two longer," Sam said to Mrs. Page, confidentially, on the return from their last trip together to Piney-woods Station. "I've got a little place down in Amador, and an interest in the Nip-and-tuck gold-mine, besides a few hundreds in bank. I've a notion to settle down some day, in a cottage with vines over the porch, with a little woman to tend the flowers in the front-garden."

As if Sam's heightened color and shining eyes had not sufficiently pointed this confession of his desires, it chanced that at this moment the eyes of both were attracted to a way-