“I don’t know what to make of her, Harry,” said Cynthia one morning after they had been back in town some time; “one day she will be bright and cheerful, another she seems as if she were going melancholy mad.”
“Oh, no; come, that’s exaggeration, little one.”
“It is not,” cried Cynthia, “for she is wonderfully changed when we are together.”
“How changed? Why, she looks prettier than ever.”
“I mean in her ways,” continued Cynthia. “We used to be sisters indeed, and never kept anything from one another. Why, Harry, I don’t believe either of us had a thought that the other did not share, and now I seem to be completely shut out from her confidence; and if it were not for you, I believe I should break my heart.”
Of course Harry Artingale behaved as a manly handsome young fellow should behave under such circumstances. He comforted and condoled with the afflicted girl, who certainly did not look in the slightest degree likely to break her heart. He offered his manly bosom for her to rest her weary head, and he removed the little pearly tears from under the pretty fringed lids of her large bright eyes. There were four of them—tears, not eyes—and Harry wiped them away without a pocket-handkerchief, the remains of one damaged tear remaining on his moustache when the process was over, and poor little Cynthia seemed much better.
“Well,” said Artingale, “there is one comfort, Cynthy: we did scare away the big bogey. She has not seen him any more?”
“No—no!” said Cynthia softly, “I suppose not. She has never said anything about him since we were at Hastings. I have fancied sometimes that she has seen him and been frightened; but she never mentions it, and I have always thought it best never to say a word.”
“Oh, yes, far the best,” said Artingale, who was examining Cynthia’s curly hair with as much interest as if it was something he saw now for the first time. “Didn’t you say, though, that you thought she saw him that day the mare bolted with you?”
“Nonsense! she did not bolt with me, Harry. Just as if I should let a mare bolt with me. Something startled her, and she leaped the hedge, and as we were off the road, and it was a chance for a gallop, I let her go across country. But you know; I told you.”