The Gold Brick

by Ann S. Stephens

Mrs. Mason was evidently angry and resentful, even of this liberty. She tore the bracelet from her arm, and tossed it haughtily into the box. Still the man's back was toward the window, so it was impossible to mark the effect this had on him, save by the droop of his shoulders, and a deprecating action of the hands. But the widow motioned him away, frowning heavily. The man sat down, closed the box, and bent his forehead upon it. She leaned over the table and spoke to him. He started up with a suddenness that frightened the lad, who leaped the fence like a deer, and fled up the road.

It was a long time before the boy ever mentioned what he had witnessed that night. The remembrance of his own shy feelings about little Rose kept him silent. Besides this, he had a consciousness that there was something to be ashamed of in peeping through the windows of a neighbor's house, and so wisely kept his peace about what he had discovered in this surreptitious manner.

The next morning, a little group of neighbors gathered to see Mrs. Mason off. A light, yellow wagon, stood before the gate, a restive, gray horse, stamped and chafed beneath his harness till it rattled again. The widow was shaking hands in the entry, while the proud owner of that equipage carried out her little hair trunk, and put it behind the seat. Rose was crying bitterly over a gray kitten that came and rubbed itself against her ankles, and purred as if it rather enjoyed the unusual commotion. This pretty child really seemed to feel the parting from her home much more keenly than her mother.

It was the father of the bright boy that had so naughtily looked into the window—who owned the wagon. With his heart full of grief, the poor fellow had begged a ride, and stood dolefully by the gate, peeping at little Rose through an opening of the boards.

At last Mrs. Mason came forth into the morning sunshine, prepared for her journey. The earth was wet, and she gathered up the skirt of her dark dress, as a queen manages her train, revealing a finely shaped foot, with which she trod daintily through the grass. Really it was difficult to say which struck the beholder most forcibly in that woman; the regal style with which she carried herself, or the marvellous physical beauty which gave grace to her very haughtiness. No one could deny that she was a superb creature, even in that cheap bombazine dress and gloomy black bonnet.

Mrs. Mason took her seat in the wagon. The owner placed himself by her side, and began to unwind the long lash from his whip handle, with the air of a man who meant to do the thing up handsomely. Little Rose had been lifted over the wheel, and placed into the centre of the seat, like an exclamation point in the middle of a short sentence. Thus they were all crowded together a little uncomfortably.

"Wait, wait," cried the lad, dashing into the house, and bringing forth Rose's tiny arm-chair with its pretty crimson cushion. "There," he said, choking back a great sob, "if pa brings it back in the wagon, maybe you'll let me keep it; nobody shall ever sit in it, Rose, 'till you come home again."

Then Rose covered her face with two dimpled little hands that were wet all over in a moment. "Oh, don't—la, don't!"

The lad sprang up on the hub of the front wheel, and laid the string of robins' eggs into her lap, his face all in a blaze, and his eyes full of tears.

"Don't forget me, Rose, don't—no boy will ever love you half so much as I do."