In a week Edward Houstoun's friends had grown weary of ruralizing—they found no longer any music in the crack of a fowling-piece, or any enjoyment in the dying agonies of the feathered tribes, and, having resisted all their persuasions to return with them, he was left alone.
"I shall report you as love-sick, or brain-sick, reclining by purling streams, under shady groves, to read Shakspeare, or Milton, or Spenser, for each of these books I have seen you at different times put in your pocket, and wander forth with a most sentimental air—doubtless to make love to some Nymph or Dryad."
"Make love! Ah! there, I take it, you have winged the right bird, Van Schaick."
"If I had seen a decent petticoat since we took leave of Mynheer Van Winkle and his daughter, on board the good sloop St. Nicholas, I should think so too, Osgood."
"At any rate, it would be wise to report our suspicions to his lady mother."
"Your suspicions of what—lunacy or love?" asked Edward Houstoun.
"A distinction without a difference—they are equivalent terms."
Thus jested his friends, and thus jested Edward Houstoun with them—well assured that no gleam of the truth had shined on them—that they never supposed his visits at Farmer Pye's possessed any greater attraction than could be derived from the farmer's details of improvements made at the Glen, of the increased value of lands, or the proceeds of the last year's crop. They had never seen Lucy Watson, and how could they suspect that while the farmer smoked his pipe at the door, and the good dame bustled about her household concerns, he sat watching with enamored eyes the changes of a countenance full of intelligence and sensibility, and listening with charmed ears to a soft, musical voice recounting, with all the simple eloquence of genuine feeling, obligations to the father whose memory was with him almost an idolatry. Still less could they divine that Shakspeare, and Milton, and Spenser were indeed often read beside a purling stream, and within the dense shadow of a grove of oak and chestnut-trees—not to Nymph or Dryad, but to a "mortal being of earth's mould,"
"A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food,
For simple pleasures, harmless wiles,
For love, blame, kisses, tears and smiles."
Here, one afternoon, a fortnight after the departure of his friends, sat Edward Houstoun with Lucy at his side. They had lingered till the sunlight, which had fallen here and there in broken and changeful gleams through over-arching boughs, touching with gold the ripples at their feet, had faded into that