"Colonel!" said Considine, entering, "I come to make you my adieux"--'adoos' is how he pronounced it, the Major was certainly not French. "What orders for Taine at the plantation? Any commands for any one down there? I shall be pleased to be your messenger. I see by the Memphis paper there was a slight touch of frost the other night, so the sickly season is over, and I can safely go home to look after my affairs. They want looking into, I reckon, after five months' absence. I have to thank you for the very pleasant summer I have put in here."
"Do you mean it, major? Going right off? I have reckoned on your being here till the New Year."
"The call to go home has come sudden, colonel, but I reckon I had best obey it."
"And what about our plan to join the plantations?"
"I'm agreeable, colonel--anxious I should say; but if the lady ain't, what can I do?"
"You don't know, major, till you try. I reckon a sister of mine ain't just like a ripe persimmon, to drop in a man's mouth before he shakes the tree."
"Shakes the tree, colonel? There ain't no man ever shook the tree harder than I did. I shook in both my shoes for a mortal hour before I could steady my voice--that shook too--enough to say what I wanted. All the time I was trying, the lady was diverting herself with her singing. French songs, and I-talian songs, full of all kind of rare fandangoes, like a mocking bird in a cherry tree. I couldn't get a word in endways for ever so long, and when I did, at last, she just stopped and looked at me out of her eyes. And when I got through, she said 'Oh! Mr. Considine, it's all a mistake. You have misunderstood, and I don't understand. I am quite sure I cannot say what you desire, so we will suppose that you have not asked me to, and that nothing has been said at all, and we will agree never to recur to the subject.' And then she asked me if I did not think the last movement in the song she had been singing very effective, and the bravura passage at the end powerfully written. By-and-by I got away. You may suppose she did not play a great deal more music, and that I had got about enough for that time. I ain't a widower, colonel, as you know; I never was refused before, and I never backed out of an engagement, so you may say that I have no experience in these matters; but it appears to me that the young lady knows her own mind, and there is no use in my speaking to her again."
"But she didn't know about the joining our plantations then. I had only just done explaining that to her when you came in, and she ran out, which shows that she ain't indifferent to the idea, as who in their senses could be? The two will make a mighty pretty property, and you and Mary will look well at the head of it, and raise a fine family to come after you. She did not know she was heir to my property when she took you down that time. Ha, ha, major! It makes me laugh to think of it. You that so long have been boss of the range, and had only to beckon to fetch any gal in all the country--you to come all the way to Canada to be took down by a gal that didn't know she had a dollar to her name!"
"Sir, the subject of your jests is not a pleasant one. Let us pass on."
"I ask your pardon, major. No offence was intended; but if you will speak to Mary now, I am willing to bet any money her answer will be different. A man of experience should not mind every word a young woman says, when it is about marrying. It is the one time in life she is let have her head, and we must not blame her for taking it, just at first. Trust me, she has thought better of it already. Try again."