This was addressed to the colored boy who brought a pint tumbler on a little waiter.
“Yez, zur,” said the boy.
“Do you take julep in the morning, Frank? Try this. Another julep for me, Nace!”
“No, no, I thank you, sir! I never do. I wish you good-morning till breakfast time,” said Frank, taking up his portmanteau, and going down stairs.
Frank put his little burden down in the lower hall, and went into the summer saloon, where he was sure, by the precedent of the last thirty days, of finding Zuleime at the window, doing her sampler-work. Yes, there she was, in her white muslin and coral, with her jet black hair and damask cheeks! He went and sat down by her, (after saying “Good-morning,”) and sat for some minutes in perfect silence, watching Zuleime work the word Love, in crimson silk. At length—
“Whom do you love best in the world, Zuleime?” he asked.
“How can you ask? Whom does everybody love best?—‘her nain sell,’ as the Welchman says, of course!” exclaimed the merry maiden.
“Humph! Well, whom do you love the next best to yourself?”
“Why, let me see,” said the girl, pausing thoughtfully, with her needle poised in her hand; “I think, that next to myself, I love—Zuleime Clifton best of all the world!”
“I thought so! And I can lay my hand upon my heart, and say, that you don’t love Zuleime Clifton a whit better than I do!—no, nor half so well! I’ll throw down my gage on that, and fight it out to extremity! Come!—What have you to say to that?” asked the young man, with all the earnestness in his face and manner that his light words wanted—“say, speak! What do you say to that?”