“Boy! I guarantee he doesn’t understand a word I have been talking about. Eh, Boy? Do you know what I have been saying to ‘Kiss-Letty’?”
Boy looked down at him with a profound air of cherubic wisdom.
“Wants marry Kiss-Letty ’morrow if ’ave me,” he said solemnly.
And then Major Desmond had one of his alarming laughs,—a laugh which threatened to dislodge Boy altogether from his position and throw him headlong on the floor. Miss Letty laughed too, but more gently, and on her pale cheeks there was a rosy tinge suggestive of a blush.
“Well, well!” said the Major, recovering from his hilarity at last,—“Boy is not such a fool as he looks, evidently! There, Letty, I won’t tease you any more. But you are very obstinate, you know,—yes, you are! What does Longfellow say?—
‘Trust no future, howe’er pleasant,
Let the dead past bury its dead:
Act, act, in the living present,
Heart within and God o’erhead.’
That’s wholesome stuff, Letty. I like Longfellow because he is always straight. Some poets go giggetting about in all sorts of dark corners and pop out suddenly upon you with a fire-cracker of a verse which you can’t understand a bit, because all the meaning fizzles out while you are looking at it,—but Longfellow!—‘Let the dead past bury its dead.’ That’s sense, Letty. And ‘Act, act in the living present.’ Why, that’s sense too. And why don’t you do it?”
“I think I try to do it,” answered Miss Letty quietly; “I like to be useful wherever I go. But for me there is no dead past, as you know,—it lives always with me and makes the best and sweetest part of the present.”
“There, I suppose I’ve been putting my foot in it again!” muttered Major Desmond, somewhat disconsolately. “You know I never meant to suggest that you did not do all the good you could and more than is necessary in your life, but what I see in Longfellow’s line is that you should ‘act, act in the living present’ for yourself, Letty. For yourself—make yourself happy, as well as others—make me happy! Now, wouldn’t that be a praiseworthy deed?”
“Not at all,” replied Miss Letty, smiling, “for you deserve to be much happier than I could ever make you. You know there are many charming young women you could marry.”