"I can't, Ira; don't ask me." The young girl's face, which was delicate in outline, was troubled, and the sensitive curves of her lips trembled. The faded blue of her dress harmonized with the soft tones of the scene; her hat lay beside her, an uncurled, articulated ostrich feather standing up in it like an exclamation point of brilliant red.
The young man pulled his hat over his eyes and looked over to the nearest boat. Mellony glanced at him timidly.
"You see, I'm all she's got," she said.
"I ain't goin' to take you away from her, unless you want to go," he replied, without looking at her.
"She thinks I'll be happier if I don't—if I don't marry."
"Happier!"—he paused in scorn—"and she badgerin' you all the time if you take a walk with me, and watchin' us as if we were thieves! You ain't happy now, are you?"
"No." Mellony's eyes filled, and a sigh caught and became almost a sob.
"Well, I wish she'd give me a try at makin' you happy, that's all." His would-be sulkiness softened into a tender sense of injury. Mellony twisted her hands together, and looked over beyond the vessels to the long, narrow neck of land with its clustering houses, beyond which again, unseen, were booming the waves of the Atlantic.
"Oh, if I only knew what to do!" she exclaimed,—"if I only knew what to do!"
"I'll tell you what to do, Mellony," he began.