“Yes, Miss Cosin,” he replied in a very dissatisfied tone; “yet I am not free altogether, my body is, but I shall leave my heart behind me.”
“Oh, that will never do,” said Alice, with more vivacity than he quite liked: “you will
want your heart. You could never be a heartless man I am quite sure,” and she looked archly at the handsome young fellow as she said it, and smiled so provokingly.
“It is true however,” he said, but in such a melancholy way, that Alice felt sure something serious was coming.
“If I might only leave my heart with you,” he added, “I should be quite content to go away without it.”
“But what on earth should I do with it?” she said, purposely disregarding the sentimental, and sticking to the literal meaning of his words.
“Keep it close to your own,” was his reply.
“Then should I be queen of hearts indeed!”
“You are that already to me.”
It was time, she thought, to put a stop to this; so, after riding on a little further, Alice said very demurely, “I thought, sir, you were more in jest than earnest, but, at all events, I am altogether in earnest when I say, that you must