And made her think of him marriagewise.’”
“The dickens! What are you reciting, you little recluse?” he inquired, with pardonable brusqueness.
“Something I made up after reading in a book about a deceitful man who inveigled a poor woman into marriage with him,” she replied, not meeting his eyes, and keeping her own fixed on a distant church steeple.
“What are you crying about, birdie?” he repeated again, this time in the softest and gentlest of tones.
“Am I crying?” she asked, innocently brushing a hand over her cheek. “It must be for that poor creature who has to be your wife.”
“Has to be,—she has promised me fifty times over;” and, forgetting his fatigue, he sprang up, and once more laid a hand on the swinging limb.
The girl tried to start it. It would not move, and she exclaimed, imperiously, “Please take your hand off my horse’s bridle.”
The horse was still detained, and, refusing to meet the steady glance of his eyes, she gazed away out over the meadows, and sang, waggishly:
“‘I’ll not marry you, kind sir, she said, sir, she said, sir, she said,
I’ll not marry you, kind sir, she said,