“Your compassion and pity for the little fish are so sweet, Lulie, that I wish I could be transformed into one, like another Indur.”
The old roguish twinkle came back to her eyes as she said:
“You can have my compassion now if you will be caught like this fish.”
“You know how quickly I would be, Lulie, but all your lines are occupied.”
“No, indeed, John, you are the one in fault; but, then, you are completely fastened by a hook baited with a pair of dark Cuban eyes.”
“Of course, Lulie, you refer to Carlotta; you are entirely mistaken; she is only a sister, and a very reserved and distant sister at that. I admire her beauty, but cannot love her.”
“Well, you look at her as if you did, any way, and I feel every time that we three are together, that you are wishing I had not come up here to spoil your pleasure, and be in the way.”
“Lulie!” I said softly, as I sat down by her on the cool green moss, and as I said it a hot flush came over my face, for I felt there was no retreat after such a tone, and that I must now tell her what I had been hinting at by action and word through my life from a child. She, too, well knew what I meant, for she dropped her eyes from mine, and laying down the little fish, commenced to pick from her finger, with great earnestness and effort, a bright scale that adhered to it.
“Let me get it off,” I said, taking her hand and flipping off the scale, but still keeping the hand in mine; “Lulie, I am holding the hand of the only girl in the world that I love. It is no jest now, but solemn earnest truth. Darling, your own heart tells you how I have idolized you from a child, and my heart tells me how I adore you now. Sometimes I have felt that you did not care for me, and my despair has been worse than eternal death; at other times I’ve thought, perhaps, you did return my love, and the happiness would have been supreme but for the dread uncertainty. But oh! Lulie, I can endure it no longer; tell me, dearest, if you——”