"Would that all my enemies were like you!" he replied. "I hesitated long about returning, but Jean would have it so."
And Mistress Jean said not a word as I took her hand in mine, but her face was mantled in scarlet and her eyes were downcast.
The prim old garden of the Nicholsons never looked more charming, the flowers more sweet and beautiful, or the green boxwood hedges more suggestive of rest and repose; the lazy waters of the Chester rolled along at its foot, gently lapping the grass. Ah! the sun was shining on a glorious world that day, for Mistress Jean walked beside me.
"Mistress Jean," said I, as we stood where the waters met the grass and looked out over the broad and silent river, flowing on and on as if to eternity, "our lives have been more like mountain torrents than the broad smooth river here. We have lived through the battles and sieges, seen blood and death and all the horrors of a great war, but now that peace has come, and our course lies through pleasant fields and verdant meadows, would it not be best for them to join and flow on as this great river does, Jean? Ah, Jean, you know how much I love you."
And then she placed her hand in mine; her eyes spoke that which I most wished to know, and the very earth seemed glorious.
I know not how long we stood there, when there came Mistress Nancy Nicholson's voice through the garden, calling, "Jean, Jean, where are you?"
"Here," she answered; and with that Mistress Nancy came running round the hedge.
"Oh, Jean," she cried, "Dick has proposed."
And then, seeing me, she stamped her little foot, and cried, "Oh, bother!" blushing meanwhile as red as one of her roses.
"And so have I, Mistress Nancy," I replied.