“Ah, Miss Janice,” exclaimed the servant, as the girl halted, “if you ’d but take it as a gift, ’t would pleasure me so!” While he spoke, without pretence of concealment he unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and taking hold of a string about his neck pulled forth a small wooden case, obviously of pocket-knife manufacture. Snapping the cord, he offered its pendant to Janice.
“I—I would keep it, Charles,” replied Janice, “but you know mommy told me—”
“And what right has she to prevent you?” broke in Charles, warmly. “It does her no wrong, nor can it harm you to keep it. What right have they to tyrannise over you? ’T is all of a piece with their forcing you to marry that awkward, ignorant put. Here, take it.” The groom seized her hand, put the case in her palm, closed her fingers over, and held them thus, as if striving to make her accept the gift.
“Oh, Charles,” cried the girl, very much flustered, “you should n’t ask—”
“Ah, Miss Janice,” he begged, “won’t you keep it? They need never know.”
“But I only wanted to show it to Tibbie,” explained the girl, “to ask her if mommy was right when she said ’t was monstrous flattered.”
“’T is an impossibility,” responded the man, earnestly, though he was unable to keep from slightly smiling at the unconscious naïveté of the question. “I would she could see it in a more befitting frame, to set it off. If thou ’t but let me, I’d put it in the other setting. Then ’t would show to proper advantage.”
“Would it take long?”
“A five minutes only.”
The girl threw open the shawl, and thrusting her hand under her neckerchief into the V-cut of her bodice, produced the miniature.