CHAPTER IX.
MEETS A PAIR OF BLUE EYES.
I kept pretty quiet the remainder of that summer—didn't even attend church for several weeks. In fact, I got father to give me a vacation, and beat a retreat into the country during the month of July, to an aunt of mine, who lived on a small farm with her husband, her son of fourteen, and a "hand." Their house was at least a mile from the nearest neighbor's, and as I was less afraid of Aunt Jerusha than of any other being of her sex, and as there was not another frock, sun-bonnet, or apron within the radius of a mile, I promised myself a month of that negative bliss which comes from retrospection, solitude, and the pleasure of following the men about the harvest-field. Sitting quietly under some shadowing tree, with my line cast into the still pool of a little babbling trout-brook, where it was held in some hollow of nature's hand, I had leisure to forget the past and to make good resolutions for the future. Belle Marigold was forever lost to me. She was Mrs. Hencoop; and Fred had knocked me down because I had been so unfortunate as to lose my presence of mind at his wedding. All was over between us.
The course now open for me to pursue was to forever steel my heart to the charms of the other sex, to attend strictly to business, to grow rich and honored, while, at the same time, I hardened into a sort of granite obelisk, incapable of blushing, faltering, or stepping on other people's toes.
One day, as the men were hauling in the "loaded wains" from the fields to the great barn, I sat under my favorite tree, as usual, waiting for a bite. Three speckled beauties already lay in a basin of water at my side, and I was thinking what a pleasant world this would be were there no girls in it, when suddenly I heard a burst of silvery laughter!
Looking up, there, on the opposite side of the brook, stood two young ladies! They were evidently city girls. Their morning toilets were the perfection of simple elegance—hats, parasols, gloves, dresses, the very cream of style.
Both of them were pretty—one a dark, bright-eyed brunette, the other a blonde, fair as a lily and sweet as a rose. Their faces sparkled with mischief, but they made a great effort to resume their dignity.
I jumped to my feet, putting one of them—my feet, I mean—in the basin of water I had for my trout.
"Oh, it's too bad to disturb you, sir," said the dark-eyed one. "You were just having a nibble, I do believe. But we have lost our way. We are boarding at the Widow Cooper's, and came out for a ramble in the woods, and got lost; and here, just as we thought we were on the right way home, we came to this naughty little river, or whatever you call it, and can't go a step farther. Is there no way of getting across it, sir?"