“I have not said a word to Emily yet. It may be that she will be afraid to venture so far, for she never was from home a night in all her life.”
“I think she’ll go,” said Mrs. Whitman; “she thinks so much of her sister, and these young folks are venturesome.”
When the matter was broached to Emily, “though she was at first,” as her mother said, “struck all up in a heap,” yet she consented, on her sister’s account, to venture.
When Mrs. Whitman, after going home, broached the matter to James, she feared, as the good woman told her husband, he would faint away; for he turned as many colors as a gobbler-turkey when a red cloth is held before him.
As for Bertie he was in raptures.
“Could anything be more nice, mother? How happened it to come just now?”
“Nothing could be more natural, Bertie; Mary Whitman has been teasing her mother ever since she was married, to let Emily come out there, and when she found James was coming again to trap, she was just furious, and there was no doing anything with her.
“You must go over there with James to-night, for Mrs. Conly will want to know about it and encourage him, for I am afraid he will appear so diffident that Mrs. Conly, and perhaps Emily too, will think he don’t want her to go with him, though I know better than that.”
“If he does, mother, I’ll pull every spear of hair out of his head. Oh, I wish it was me instead of him, I’d make my best bow, so, mother (suiting the action to the word), and I’d say that nothing would give me greater pleasure than to enjoy the company of Miss Conly, and that I considered it a privilege to be the instrument of cheering Mrs. Whitman in her loneliness.”
“Ay, you are very brave, but if it was your own case, you might, perhaps, be as bad as James.”