My heart beat; my eyelids dropped, but I lifted them, in shy innocence, to his face, inquiringly, wistfully. What would he say next?
"Miss Frost, have you ever seen a clam-bake?"
I reflected a moment. Were clam-bakes indigenous to our Vermont soil? Were they a product of the mountains, or a spontaneous growth of the river vales?
"I do not think I have ever seen them growing in Vermont," says I, at last; "yet there are few roots or vegetables, wild or tame, that I don't know something about. There is wake-robin, on the mountains, with its spokes of red berries; and snake-root, and adder's-tongue; but I don't remember clam-bakes among them, and I know they are not cultivated in our parts as garden-sas, I beg pardon, as vegetables."
Mr. Burke smiled out loud, and his black mustache curled down on each side of his lips delightfully.
"I fancy you have never seen anything of the kind in Vermont. Clam-bakes are only found at the sea-side—principally around Rhode Island. I don't think they prevail much in the mountains, as yet."
"You don't say so!" says I. "Then they are a salt-water plant?"
"Principally found in the sand and mud."
"That don't seem to me very remarkable," says I; "most vegetables are found in one or the other. Watermelons, for instance, grow best in a bare sand-bank: perhaps your new-fangled vegetable is of that species?"
Again his black mustache gave a lovely curl, and his black eyes looked into mine so tenderly, as if something I had said tickled him almost to death.