Boston Neighbours In Town and Out

by Agnes Blake Poor

"I?"—a little bitterly. "I am a very idle fellow, who has made but little effort to better himself or others. But we won't talk of efforts, for I am sure your conscience must acquit you there. I suppose you were thinking more of natural gifts—of pleasing, which is after all only another way of helping. One pleases one, and one another, and it is as well, perhaps, to be loved by a few as liked by a great many. Don't doubt, my dear Miss Beecher, that any man who truly loves you will find you more charming even than Katie Day."

What there was in this harmless and well-meant speech to excite Eleanor's anger I could not imagine; but girls are queer creatures. She grew, if possible, redder than before, and her eyes fairly flashed. "No one—" she began, and stopped, unable to speak a word. I went on, as much for a sort of curious satisfaction I had in hearing my own words, as for any consolation they might be to her. "Beautiful as she is, she only pleases my eye; she does not touch my heart. I am not one particle in love with her, and sometimes I scarcely even like her."

"Stop!" cried Eleanor; "you must not say such things—I did very wrong to speak to you as I did. You mean to be kind, but you don't know how every word you say humiliates me. Surely, you can't think me so mean as to let it please me, and yet, perhaps, you know me better than I do myself. There is a wretched little bit of a feeling that I would not own if I could help it, that—that—" She was trembling like a leaf now, and so pale that I thought she was going to faint away. I did not know whether to feel more sorry for her or angry with myself for having made things worse instead of better by my awkwardness. There was only one way to get out of the scrape. I threw my arm around her shaking form, took her cold hand in mine, and said with what was genuine feeling at the time, "Dearest Eleanor!" Of course there was no going back after that.

Eleanor, equally of course, made her escape at once from my arm, but I still held her hand as I went on. "Do—do believe me. I love you and no one else." She seemed too much astonished to say anything. "Could you not love me a little?"

She looked at me still surprised and incredulous. "You can't mean it—you don't know what you are saying."

I remember feeling well satisfied with myself, for doing the thing so exactly according to the models in all dramas of polite society; but Eleanor, it must be owned, was terribly astray in her part. I went on with increasing energy. "Plainly, Eleanor, will you be my wife? Will you let me show what it is to be loved?"

Poor Eleanor twisted her damp little handkerchief round and round in her restless fingers without speaking for a moment, and then said in a frightened whisper, "I—I don't know."

I tried to take her hand again, but she drew it away, and said shyly, "Indeed I don't know. I never dreamed of any one's loving me, much less you. I don't know how I ought to feel."

"Have you never thought how you would feel if you loved anyone?" I asked, her childish simplicity making me smile, and I felt as if I were talking to a little girl; but, to my surprise, she blushed deeply, and then answered firmly, as if bound to be truthful, "Yes! I have felt—all girls have their dreams"; here a something in her tone made her seem to have grown a woman in a moment; "I thought I should never find any real person to make my romance about, and so for a long time I have loved Sir Philip Sidney."

"What?"