He still wore his sailor's rig; was very neat in his dress; never appearing among business men or at his house, in the same garb in which he stood at the helm. How anxiously would his sisters watch for the first glimpse of his white sail in the distance! and how elastic were their steps, as they bounded from the house to meet him, as soon as they descried their neat, trim sailor-boy, as they called him, turning the angle in the shore near their house.
The day of his return had come, and Mrs. Oakum and Susan were busily employed clearing away the relics of the early meal, and putting, if possible, a brighter polish on every thing, when Mary came into the room, arrayed in her very best, and in one hand she held a small green bag, and in the other her sun-bonnet.
'Why, sister, whither away so early? Your new dress on too, your hair arranged so neatly, and your best shoes and all. Where are you going to make a call so early?'
'Oh, no call, sister dear! I am only going to the store. You know I lost my thimble the other evening, and I thought I would get another before Sam comes; he might want me to do something, and I should be sorry to say I had no thimble.'
A deep blush spread all over Mary's white neck, and temples, and forehead; the rich rose of her cheeks seemed, of an instant, to have sent its crimson hue in all directions. Had Mary equivocated? Not in the least; she had never learned that art. Was not the errand a lawful one? Certainly it was; she told the truth in all its simplicity. She wanted a thimble, and was going for that, and with no other motive whatever.
It was simply a flash of truth that crossed her mind—it was elicited by the remark of her sister in reference to her dress. Susan meant nothing in particular; nor had Mary, until then, an idea that she meant any thing in particular by what she had done.
We must look into things a little, however, while Mary is on her way to the store; for she smiled, slipped on her bonnet, and was off.
Mary was but a few years since a laughing, little romping girl, and she had grown up in great intimacy with a very staid and rather good-looking boy. She had sat on his lap, walked with him by the shore hand in hand, looking for pretty stones and shells; played hide-and-seek with him, in company with her brother and sister, among the rocks by moonlight, and even kissed him just as she did Sam, and thought no harm of it. She has, to be sure, long since, eschewed all such things, and stands now upon her womanly dignity. But this boy, although grown up to manhood, has not grown out of her interest. When the playfulness of childhood passed away, as by right it should, other feelings began to take its place. A deep respect for his fine character, which shone brighter and brighter as he grew up; an admiration of his manly appearance; a feeling of gratitude for the kind interest he took in her brother; a desire to do whatever she heard him say he liked; in fine, to assimilate her views and feelings, her tastes and pleasures, to his, was the unconscious desire of her heart.
But did any body know this? Not a human being. A mother's searching eye may possibly at times have discerned a glimmering of the truth; but if so, she had kept it to herself.
Did Mary know this? No, not as the truth itself must say she did; it was a secret, within what she could see of her little heart, into which no human eye had yet pried; but there it was. It did sometimes betray itself a little—a very little: that blush which seemed to come without a cause, which sent her off so quickly from observation, was just a token that she was a little conscious—only a little—how the matter stood.