Then they began to arrange their furniture. It was very easily done, they had so little—a bedstead with its appointments, a table, a half-dozen chairs, and almost everything else in half-dozens. The form of the room favoured the convenient arrangement of these things. The bedstead had already been put up in the corner between the west window and the door, and the table placed in the corresponding corner between the door and the east window. They set the chairs in their places, and then Mark began to unpack the china, while Rosalie arranged it on the shelves of the corner cupboard. There were several things—remnants of past refinement—out of keeping with their present condition; among them, the French china—that looked upon their rough pine shelves as the elegant Mark Sutherland and the fair and delicate Rosalie looked in their rude log cabin—and the superb white Marseilles counterpanes, whose deep fringes touched the rough plank floor; and the tester and valance of fine and beautiful net-work; and lastly, the tamboured curtains that lay upon the chairs, ready to be put up when Mark should have mended the windows. These were certainly out of place here, but it could not be helped; they were Rosalie’s little personal effects, endeared to her by long possession, and by their having been the property, and some of them—the tamboured curtains and the net valance, for instance—the handiwork of her mother. By sunset, all was arranged, except two matters—the broken windows, with which now the young master of the house began to employ himself, taking out the sashes and laying them upon the table, and laying pane after pane in their places; and the barrel of flour which stood in the middle of the floor, with a quarter of beef laid across the top of it—both waiting to be put away out of sight, in a proper place; that is, supposing a proper place could be found on premises where there was neither storehouse, pantry, nor shed, nor even a second room.
Mark busied himself with the window sashes, trying pane after pane in the empty forms. But at length, turning around, he smiled and said—
“It’s no use, Rose; I’m not a glazier, and so carefully as I thought I measured the sashes and the glass, they will not exactly fit; and I have no diamond here to trim them, and so I suppose they must be left until to-morrow.”
And he replaced the empty sashes in the window frames. Then, seeing the neglected barrel of flour, he wheeled it up against the wall, near the door, and said it must remain there for the present; and Rosalie took a coarse, clean table-cloth and spread it over the beef, that still lay upon the top.
“And now, dear,” he said, looking around, “I believe we are as well fixed as we can be for the present. Nothing remains but to get supper; and, as I was out here in the West two years before you ever saw it, I shouldn’t wonder if I hadn’t to give you some instruction.”
“You teach me to cook! I, my uncle’s housekeeper for two years, while you were wandering about from town to town!” exclaimed Rosalie.
Mark laughed, and bade her remember that when she was “uncle’s” housekeeper she had experienced cooks at her command, and that her housekeeping duties and responsibilities consisted in carrying the keys and ordering what she pleased to have for dinner. And he further advised her to recollect that she was not to snap up her liege lord in that way, either! Whereupon Rose bade him mind his business and his briefs; for that she should snap him, and box his ears, too, whenever the spirit moved her. She! Mark snatched her, laughing, to his bosom, and half suffocated her with kisses, and then holding her tight, bade her do her wickedest.
“And, Rose,” he exclaimed merrily, “I do not know why it is; but out here, in this cabin of the wilderness, with nobody but you for company, I feel as if the restraints of society and of maturity had fallen away, and restored me to the freedom and the wilfulness and the irresponsible wickedness of my boyhood. And oh! little one, if you were only a great deal taller and stronger, what a wrestle we would have!”
And he gazed down on her there, standing within his arms—so small, so fair, so perfectly helpless, so utterly in his power—and all the wantonness of youth fled from before her helplessness and her beauty, and a flood of unutterable tenderness rushed over his heart; and, still gazing upon her with infinite love, he said—
“God forever bless you—you little, little, wee thing; you delicate, beautiful creature; and God forever forsake me, if ever, willingly, I give you a moment’s pain or sorrow!”