Yes, sisters, I was brought, in the hot blast of those summer days, to a state of unchristian envy, and would have been glad to swap places with flounders, or have slept in some cellar, with a block of ice for a pillow.
But nothing that I ever saw lasts for ever, or if it does I haven't lived long enough to prove it. Still, one gets restless in weather like this, when human beings are dropping down dead in the streets of a city close by in dozens, from sunstrokes.
This morning I sat in my room, with a short gown and not over many skirts on, looking through the green slats of my door, and watching the sunshine shimmer down on the waves where the little white vessels were folding their sails, and going to sleep like birds too lazy for flying, when a colored person came to my door, and says he:
"Mr. Burke's compliments, and will Miss Frost take a walk with him on the beach?"
I started up, and, says I:
"Won't I!" Then I composed myself, and sent back compliments, and Miss Frost will have great pleasure in complying with Mr. Burke's polite invitation.
When the—colored messenger was gone, I sat down in the Boston rocker, clasped my hands, and drew a deep, deep sigh of ecstatic expectation. Then I remembered that he was waiting, and sprang to my feet.
With my two shaking hands I fastened the other woman's hair over my own, that would neither curl nor friz worth a cent that awful hot day. Then I put on a white muslin dress, that looked seraphically innocent, and tightened it up with a plaid silk sash, that circled my slender waist and floated off like a rainbow breaking through a cloud.
Then I took my parasol in one hand, held my flowing skirts up with the other, and went forth to meet my destiny. Oh, how my feet longed to dance! How my girlish heart beat and fluttered in this innocent bosom.
He was waiting for me in the long stoop, leaning against a post, and fanning his manly head with the broad brim of his Panama hat. Oh, how majestic, how—but language fails me here.