“Oh yes, you must, Jeff. You’ve no idea what a sweet girl she has become. I am quite charmed with her—so modest, and unselfish, and clever, and good, and—and, in short, I call her the four F’s, for she is fair, fragile, fervent, and funny.”
“What a catalogue!” exclaimed the youth, laughing; “you may well be charmed with her. But what do you mean by funny? Does she try to make people laugh?”
“Oh dear, no! In company she can scarce be made to speak at all, but she is so fond of fun—has such a lively appreciation of humour, and laughs so heartily. She has grown quite into a woman since I last saw her when her father went to sea. There she is!”
Miss Millet sprang from her chair with the agility almost of a young woman, and ran to open the door, for a cab was heard pulling up in front of the cottage.
There was a delighted little shriek from “Auntie!” and the warmest salutations of welcome; and the next moment Miss Millet, with the captain’s daughter, arm in arm, embracing one another, entered the parlour.
The coastguardsman was transfixed, for there, before him, flushed and panting, stood—
“A maid with eyes of heavenly blue,
And rippling hair of golden hue;
With parted lips of Coral too,
Disclosing pearls—and—”
All the rest of it! Yes, no wonder that Jeffrey Benson was transfixed. Still less wonder that Rosebud stood in much the same condition; for, a young giant in pilot-cloth, damp and dirty, dishevelled, bespattered with mud, tied up about the fingers and plastered over the nose, was not precisely what she had expected to find in Aunt Millet’s parlour.
They were soon introduced, however, and on the best of terms; for the shrinking from Jeff’s filthy appearance changed in a moment to hero-worship in the romantic heart of Rose, when she was told the cause of the youth’s condition, and heard all the details of the rescue from his own manly lips.
It was love at first sight with both of them; more than that, it was first love at first sight! We have profound sympathy with young people thus circumstanced, especially when they are reticent, and don’t give way to sentimental silliness. A good manly and womanly case of this sort of love, in which the parties concerned take a serious header and go deep down, without the smallest intention of ever coming up again, is pleasant to contemplate and agreeable to record.