“I have been up all night,” he replied, sleepily.
“All night,—then you were after no good.”
“No, no good,” he said, uncovering an eye to look at her. “I was drawing out a new will, arranging papers, etc., preparatory to—”
“Suicide?” she asked, in an interested way.
“No, not suicide, matrimony. To-morrow morning at six of the clock I shall cease to be a free man.”
The girl looked him all over; she observed curiously the effect of the little flecks of light playing from his dusty walking shoes up to his dark, smooth face with its heavy black moustache. Then she said, hastily, “I shall not marry you to-morrow, Mr. Owl.”
“I did not ask you to, Miss Parrot,” he said, disagreeably.
The girl resumed her swinging, her eyes this time fixed on the green meadows and the pretty village. For a long time she ignored the presence of her lover as completely as she did that of the huge black watch-dog loitering about the trunk of the tree in expectation of her descent and preparation of his breakfast.
However, she was singing of him, although she did not address him, and as she sang the man’s gloomy expression changed to one of complacence, for he was again her theme.
“‘I remember the black wharves and the slips,