“If I were a man, I should try to be a fine wrestler.”
“It is a great comfort,” said Brune. “If you have a quarrel of any kind, it is a deal more satisfactory to meet your man, and throw him a few times over your head, than to go to law with him. It puts a stop to unpleasantness very quickly and very good-naturedly.”
Then Sarah rose and opened the piano, and from its keys dashed out a lilting, hurrying melody, like the galloping of horses and shaking of bridles; and in a 202 few moments she began to sing, and Brune went to her side, and, because she looked so steadily into his eyes, he could remember nothing at all of the song but its dashing refrain,—
“For he whom I wed
Must be north country bred,
And must carry me back to the North Countrie.”
Then Aspatria played some wonderful music on her harp, and Sarah and Brune sat still and listened to their own hearts, and sent out shy glances, and caught each other in the act, and Brune was made nervous, and Sarah gay, by the circumstance.
By and by they began to talk of schools, and of how much Aspatria had learned; and so Brune regretted his own ignorance, and wished he had been more attentive to his schoolmaster.
Sarah laughed at the wish. “A knowledge of Shakspeare and the musical glasses and the Della Cruscans,” she said, “is for foolish, sentimental women. You can wrestle, and you can fight, and I 203 suppose you can make money, and perhaps even make love. Is there anything else a soldier needs?”
“Colonel Jardine is very clever,” continued Brune, regretfully; “and I had a good schoolmaster—”