“From your father’s clearing on Mud Creek, Marian.”
“Oh! this is unexpected—what fortune to have met you, sir! You have seen my sister then?”
“I have.”
“And spoken with her? How long ago?”
“Scarcely a month.”
“So lately! And how looks she? She was well!”
“How looks she?—Beautiful, Marian, like yourself. She was well, too, when I last saw her.”
“Dear Lilian!—O sir! how glad I am to hear from her! Beautiful I know she is—very, very beautiful. Ah me!—they said I was so too, but my good looks have been lost in the wilderness. A life like that I have been leading soon takes the softness from a girl’s cheeks. But, Lilian! O stranger! tell me of her! I long to hear of her—to see her. It is but six months, and yet I think it six years, since I saw her. Oh! how I long to throw my arms around her! to twine her beautiful golden-hair around my fingers, to gaze into her blue innocent eyes!” My heart echoed the longings.
“Sweet little Lilian! Ah—little—perhaps not, sir? She will be grown by this? A woman like myself?”
“Almost a woman.”