"I shall dislike to go, after all," she said at last, "but perhaps it is best. I shall cry when I leave here, I know, and be very homesick for a spell, but then I shall have you, and that is a good deal." Then this mingled clouds and sunshine of a girl deliberately rose, and like a big baby, crept into her brother's lap, and tucking her sunny head under his chin, whispered, "Oh, if you were never going to be married, Bertie, I would leave it all and try to be contented. I could come up here every summer, and go the rounds, could I not?" Then she added disconsolately, "But you will get married, and in less than a year, too. I know it. Your beautiful island girl cannot and will not keep you waiting so long. I could not if I were she, I know."
Then that big brother, blessed with such an adorable sister, raised her face so he could look into her blue eyes and said, "No sweetheart and no wife shall ever lessen my love for you, Alice, who have been my playmate, my companion, and my confidant all my life. And if you are likely to be homesick and unhappy in Boston, we will abandon the plan at once."
"Let me think about it a few weeks first," she replied. "I could not go away until this term of school is over, and that will not be till Christmas."
Then after those two good friends had discussed the proposed step in all its bearings for a half hour Albert said, "Come, now, sis, sing a little for me; I am hungry to hear you once more."
She complied willingly, and as the mischievous heartbreaker never forgot to pay an old score, the moment she was seated at the piano she began with "Hold the Fort," and singing every verse of that, followed it with "Pull for the Shore."
Her brother never winced, and after she had inflicted two more of those well-worn gospel hymns upon him he quietly remarked, "My dear sis, you are not punishing me for what I once said half as much as you think you are. Sing some more of them; they sound like old times." And it was true, too.
The latest and most classic compositions are all very well for highly cultured ears afflicted with Wagnerian delirium; but for plain, ordinary country-born people, such as Albert was, there is a sweet association in the old songs first heard in childhood that no classic productions can usurp. The "Quilting Party" will surely recall some moonlight walk home with a boyhood sweetheart along a maple-shaded lane, when "on your arm a soft hand rested," and "Money Musk" will carry you back to a lantern-lit barn floor with one fiddler perched on a pile of meal bags; and how delightful it was to clasp that same sweet girl's waist when "balance and swing" came echoing from the rafters.
And so that evening, as the piquant voice of Alice Page trilled the list from "Lily Dale" to "Suwanee River" and back to "Bonny Eloise" and "Patter of the Rain," Albert lazily puffed his cigar and lived over his boyhood days.
When the concert was ended he exclaimed:
"Do you know, sis, that an evening like this in Boston would seem like a little taste of heaven to me, after I came back from the all-day grind among hard-hearted, selfish men who think only of the mighty dollar! And now you see why I want you to come to Boston to live."