“Why shouldn’t you?” said the energetic little old lady, interrupting me. “What better chance could you have, I should like to know—a nice long day in the country, a picnic excursion, a pleasant party, with lots of openings for private conversation? Dear me, Frank, you are not half a lover! If I were a handsome young fellow like you, I would soon cut you out, my boy! Only be bold and speak out to her. Girls like boldness. I wouldn’t have given twopence for a bashful man when I was young.”
“So I will, Miss Pimpernell,” said I, carried away by her energy and enthusiasm; “I will go to the school treat—that is, if you will only kindly see Miss Clyde for me”—I was rather diffident of letting Miss Pimpernell know of the friendly footing we had been on, regarding Christian nomenclature—“beforehand, and get her to forgive me. You will, won’t you, dear Miss Pimpernell?”
“None of your soft-sawder, Master Frank,” replied the old lady; “I will do what I can to make your peace, as I promised; but, as to anything further, you must be a man, and speak up for yourself.”
“I will, you may rely,” I said, determined to bring matters to an issue ere the week should close.
Before Thursday came, however, I knew that Miss Pimpernell had kept her word in interceding for me, and that Min had quite forgiven me.
She was “friends with me once more,” I was assured; for, when I passed her window the next evening, in fear and trembling lest she should still be hostile and not recognise me, she bowed and smiled to me in her own old sweet way, as she used to do before my fit of jealousy and our consequent estrangement.
Oh! how ardently I looked forwards to the approaching school treat. I was then resolved to learn whether she loved me or no. “Faint heart never won fair lady,” as Miss Pimpernell had told me; I would deserve her reproach no longer.
Thursday arrived at length, and with it the school treat.
This summer “outing” had been an institution of annual celebration by our vicar long before it became a habit of London clergymen to send columns of appeals to the benevolent in the daily papers to assist the poor children of their respective congregations towards having “a day’s pleasuring in the country.”
Our vicar, however, was not one of those who thus “passed round the hat” to strange laity! No, he made his institution entirely a self-supporting one; and his school-children had the additional pleasure of knowing, that, they assisted in paying for their treat themselves, earning it in advance, with no thanks to “charity,” or strangers, all the same.