“From the pool, Rosa?” cried Charley; “What could tempt thee to risk thy life for such trifles? If thou hadst slipt over the treacherous brink, where there was no one by to save thee—thou wert gone! irrecoverably gone! How couldst thou be so rash? my very flesh creeps to think on’t!”
“Don’t be angry with me, Charley!” said Rosa coaxingly—“what risk would I not run to give thee pleasure?”
“But you have given me any thing but pleasure in this matter, Rosa,” said Charley; “I tremble too much to think of the hazard thou hast run, to look with pleasure on any thing that could have occasioned it.”
“So thou wilt not let me put the wreath on thy bonnet, then?” said Rosa, with a tear half disclosing itself in her eye-lid; “Come, come, Charley! sit down—sit down on this bank, and do let me put it upon thy bonnet.”
“If it will pleasure thee to make a fool of me, Rosa,” said Charley, smiling on her, and kissing her; “Thou shalt do with me as thou mayest list.”
“That is a dear kind Charley,” cried Rosa, her moist eyes sparkling with delight, and throwing her arms around his neck; “I’ll make no fool of thee: I’ll make thee so handsome!”
“Handsome!” exclaimed Charley, laughing. “Why Rosa, it is making a fool of me, indeed, to say that thou can’st make me handsome, with this ugly deep cross-mark on my cheek.”
“That cross-mark on your cheek, Charley!” cried the little girl, with an intensity of feeling much beyond anything which her years might have warranted; “To me that cross-mark is beautiful! I love that noble brow of thine—those eyes, that whenever they look upon me, tell me that I am dear to thee—those lips, that so often kiss me, and instruct me, and say kind things to me—but that mark of the cross on thy cheek—oh, that hath to me a holy influence in’t; it reminds me that, but for thy noble courage which earned it for thee, I should have been food for the young eagles of the craig. Charley! I could not fail to love thee, for thy kindness to me; but I never could have loved thee as I do love thee, but for these living marks which you bear of all that you suffered for thine own little Rosa. Kiss me my dear, dear Charley!”
“My little wifey!” cried Charley, clasping the innocent girl in his arms, and smothering her with kisses.
“Aye,” said Rosa, artlessly, “I am thy little wifey. All the gossips say that I am fated to be so; for you know I have got my cross mark as well as you, aye, and on my left cheek too. The eagles did that kind turn for me. They marked us both with the cross alike. See! you can see my cross here quite plain.”