Yes, a regular wet blanket had awaited his return from Italia's classic shores. What an insufferable bore to be pledged, promised, all but tied to an unknown female whose only merit, he wilfully wagered, lay in her invincible ground rents.
"Why, my son," his doting mother said, "think of it—two hundred thousand dollars in her own right, and all yours for the asking."
He did think of it; and he vowed in his own mind to do something—anything; run away, commit suicide, before he would join himself for life to any girl he had never seen, especially old Thornton's daughter, who seemed so willing to jump at him. Not he. In vain they urged him to cultivate the fair damsel. Not till he had braced his nerves with country air, he said. This tonic secured, he graciously consented to be introduced, but would reserve the ratification of the wedding treaty till later.
What's the use in having fathers and mothers, anyhow? They only plague the life out of one. They don't ever think of letting a fellow alone once in a while. They—
What other heinousness they would be guilty of would never be shaped into thought, for at this moment down came a dainty little slipper, with a dainty little rosette, from the tree above, plump on to his sketch, and a violent start and a glance upward revealed a bewildering little pink-stockinged foot, which was the daintiest of all.
The abrupt spring to his feet brought down the camp stool, cigar, easel and all, but not the foot, for the rest of the apparition was caught and hidden by the clustering young shoots of the apple tree.
A whistle—quite involuntary, if not polite—was shaping itself a brief distance below his staring eyes, when, recovering himself and tiptoeing to his full height, he peered into the branches and said, a little irrelevantly:
"I beg pardon!"
Two milk-white hands parted the leaves, and a flushed pink-and-white face appeared at the opening.