“Lip-service, wench. No, it will not do. Before others as you like; but alone with me—there, don’t cry! the frost will catch your tears, and your lashes will be hung with diamonds no gift of mine. We must think this all out, Betty, by a glowing fire. It is too cold here. That little touch on my heart is the only feeling I am conscious of.”
“And you gave me your coat! Oh! take it—take it.”
“That I shall not.”
“I am warm—indeed I am.”
“Lie in your burrow, little rabbit, and hide your eyes from the dogs. We go up to Mr. Breeds’s tavern here, and I don’t know what may be abroad.”
He had decided to risk the main road for their return. The augmentation of his party, the necessity of direct progress in that killing cold were his sufficient reasons. They rode past the house and awakened nothing but echoes from its stony walls. On the blind of the lighted tap fell the shadows from within of a group of men. No notice, however, was taken of the little cavalcade as it went silently by outside in the snow.
“Betty, can you spell?”
“Oh! yes.”
“Spell this, then: l-o-v-e-r. What, you can’t? I must put you to school. See, l-o-v-e, and r for the little thumb that points at me. That is your lesson; and now here’s a prize for the quick scholar in the palm of her hand. Close it and keep it. You won’t? Then you shall return it to me in the dark by and by.”
He hardly knew what nonsense he talked. A core of fire flickered in the numbness of his brain. He gave a whoop! like an excited boy presently as a herd of fallow deer—some twenty or thirty of them—broke from a covert and went beating down the road in front of them.