“Not on this little comfortable beach, though,” said Dr. Eben.
“Oh, no!” replied Hetty, “I did not mean such sea-shore as this. But even here, I should find it sad if I were alone.”
“All places are sad if one is alone, Miss Gunn,” replied the doctor, in a pensive tone, rare with him. Hetty turned a surprised glance at him, and did not speak for a moment. Then she said:
“Yes; but nobody need be alone: there are always plenty of people to take into one's house. If you are lonely, why don't you get somebody to live with you, or you might be married,” she added, in as purely matter-of-fact a tone, as she would have said, “you might take a journey,” or “you might build on a wing to your house.”
This suggestion sounded oddly enough, coming so soon from the lips of the woman whom the doctor had just been ardently wishing he could marry; but its cool and unembarrassed tone was sufficient to corroborate his utmost disheartenment.
“Ah!” he thought, “I knew she didn't care any thing for me!” and he fell into a silent brown study which Hetty did not attempt to break. This was one among her many charms to Dr. Eben, that she was capable of sitting quietly by a person's side for long intervals of silence. The average woman, when she is in the company of even a single person, seems to consider herself derelict in duty, if conversation is not what she calls “kept up;” an instinctive phrase, which, by its universal use, is the bitterest comment on its own significance. Men have no such feeling. Two men will sit by each other's side, it may be for hours, in silence, and feel no derogation from good comradeship. Why should not women? The answer is too evident. Women have a perpetual craving to be recognized, to be admired; and a large part of their ceaseless chatter is no more nor less than a surface device to call your attention to them; as little children continually pull your gown to make you look at them. Hetty was incapable of this. She was a vivacious talker when she had any thing to say; but a most dogged holder of her tongue when she had not. In this instance she had nothing to say, and she did not speak: the doctor had so much to say that he did not speak, and they sat in silence till the shrill bell from the farm-house door called them to dinner. As they walked slowly up to the house, the doctor said:
“You don't wonder that I hate to go away from this lovely place, do you, Miss Gunn?”
Any other woman but Hetty would have felt something which was in his tone, though not in his words. But Hetty answered bluntly:
“Yes, I do wonder; it is very lovely here: but I should think you'd want to be at work; I do. I think we've had play-spell enough; for, after all, it hasn't been any thing but play-spell for you and me.”
“Now she despises me,” thought poor Dr. Eben. “She hasn't any tolerance in her, anyhow,” and he was grave and preoccupied all through dinner.