“I don’t care for company! I don’t care for anything—you are so contrary—so hateful. You never stay at home when the young folks are coming—it’s too bad!” And Jane flung herself on the grass which surrounded the little cove where a bark canoe lay rocking in the water, and indulged her petulance by tearing up the strawberry-vines which her sister had planted there.
“Don’t spoil my strawberry-bed,” said Mary, bending over the wayward girl and kissing her forehead. “Come, be good-natured and let me go; I will bring you some honeysuckle-apples, and a whole canoe full of wood-lilies. Do say yes; I can’t bear to see you discontented to-day!”
“I would not care about it so much—though it is hard that you will never go to frolics, nor enjoy yourself like other folks—but Edward Clark made me promise to keep you at home to-day.”
A color, like the delicate tinting of a shell, stole into Mary’s cheek as it lay caressingly against the rich damask of her sister’s.
“If no one but Edward were coming I should be glad to stay,” she replied, in a soft voice; “but you have invited a great many, haven’t you? Who will be here from the village?”
Jane began to enumerate the young men who had been invited to her birthday party; they held precedence in her heart, and consequently in her speech; for, to own the truth, Jane Derwent was a perfect specimen of the rustic coquette; a beauty, and a spoiled one; but a warm-hearted, kind girl notwithstanding.
“There are the Ward boys, and John Smith, Walter Butler from the fort, and Jason Wintermoot——”
Jane stopped, for she felt a shiver run over the form around which her arms were flung as she pronounced the last name and saw the cheek of her sister blanch to the whiteness of snow.
“I had forgotten,” she said, timidly, after a moment; “I am sorry I asked him. You are not angry with me, Mary, are you?”
“Angry? No! I never am angry with you, Jane. I don’t want to refuse you anything on your birthday—but I will not meet these people. You cannot guess—you can have no idea of my sufferings when any one looks upon me except those I love very, very dearly.”