“Did Edward say this?” murmured the poor deformed one as Jane half-lifted, half-persuaded her from the ground, and with one arm flung over her neck was pressing the face she had been praising to her own troubled bosom.
Poor Mary, though naturally tall, was so distorted that when she stood upright her head scarcely reached a level with the graceful bust of her sister, and Jane stooped low to plant reassuring kisses upon her forehead.
“Did he say it, Mary? Yes, he certainly did; and so did I say it. Look here.” And eagerly gathering the folds of a large shawl over the shoulders of the deformed, she gently drew her to the brink of the basin, where the canoes still lay moored. “Look there!” she exclaimed, as they bent together over the edge of the green sward; “can you wish for anything handsomer than that face? Dear, good Mary, look.”
An elm-tree waved its branches over them, and the sunshine came shimmering through the leaves with a wavy light. The river was tranquil as a summer sky, and the sisters were still gazing on the lovely faces speaking to theirs from its clear depths, when a canoe swept suddenly round the grassy promontory which formed one side of the cove.
With a dash of the oar the fairy skiff shot, like an arrow, into the basin, and its occupant, a young man of perhaps two-and-twenty, leaped upon the green sward. The sisters started from their embrace. A glad smile dimpled the round cheek of the younger as she stepped forward to meet the newcomer. But Mary drew her shawl more closely over her person, and shrunk timidly back, with a quickened pulse, a soft welcome beaming from her eyes, and her face deluged with a flood of soft, rosy color, which she strove to conceal with the tresses that fell about her like a golden mist.
“I have just come in time to keep you at home for once,” said the youth, approaching the timid girl, after having gaily shaken hands with her sister. “I am sure we shall persuade you——”
He was interrupted by a call from Jane, who had run off to the other side of the cove; no doubt with the hope of being speedily followed by her visitor.
“Come here, Edward, do, and break me some of this sweet-brier; it scratches my fingers so.”
Clark dropped Mary’s hand and went to obey this capricious summons.
“Don’t try to persuade Mary to stay,” said Jane, as she took a quantity of the sweet-brier from the hands of her companion. “She is as restless when we have company as the mocking-bird you gave us; and which we never could tame, besides,” she added, with a little hesitation, “Wintermoot will be here, and she don’t like him.”