Each golden moment spent with you on wings of Joy would flee;
The sky would be a ceaseless blue if you loved me!”
Berry Vining, the little village beauty, singing so blithely at her window of a love that as yet she had never known, was at the crisis of her fate, for at that very moment down the village street swept a gay cavalcade of riders, and as the sweet voice floated out upon the air, their glances turned upward in irrepressible admiration.
“What odds to me how dark the night if you loved me,
For in your eyes a beacon light of love I’d see;
My future, now a dark abyss, forever changed would be,
To sunny paths of rosy bliss if you loved me!”
She was so lovely, this little Berry Vining, with her wealth of curly chestnut locks, framing a face so fresh and fair as the morning glories round the window—so lovely, with her big, wondering, brown eyes under long, shady lashes, her sea-shell tints, her perfect little nose, and rose-red lips, and dainty chin, where dimples swarmed, entrancingly, whenever she smiled, that no one could look at her without admiration.
When all those eager eyes were leveled at her window the girl drew very hastily backward, but not until she had seen one hat lifted from a handsome head in her honor, as the man’s eyes paid eager tribute to her charms.
It all passed in a moment, but not too quickly for that flashing glance to strike fire in a romantic maiden’s heart.