XVII
THE COMING OF THE SHIP: THE DOCTOR’S PATIENT.
A selected reading from The Head of a Hundred. Edited by Maud Wilder Goodwin. Dr. Humphrey Huntoon, a young Englishman, in the early days of the colonies comes to this country in pique at the coldness of Elizabeth Romney, his sweetheart, who is above him in social station. The story is filled with charming pictures of colonial life and sentiment. In the opening part of this reading, Huntoon, in a burst of confidence, tells his old friend, the ship-captain, of his disappointment in love. In the second part a new ship comes from England.
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’TIS strange what lightness of spirit comes with the laying bare of a sore heart. Verily, a trouble half told is half healed. Here I, who had not been merry for months, found myself now smiling in the dark, as I talked of those pleasant days of old. Then, like a mourner ashamed that he hath forgot his grief, I caught up my melancholy once more.
“Well, well! All that is over and gone. If she loved me in those childish years (and I still think she did), she outgrew the foolishness soon enow. Yet, from time to time, as she grew into maidenhood, she let drop some word, some hint, as tho’ she would say, ‘Perhaps!’ but ere I could pry into the meaning of her words her eyes gathered merriment, like as if they were laughing at the poor fool who allowed himself to be cheated thus.
“Once, ere I went to Oxford, I rode beneath her window. She, leaning out of the casement, did drop a sprig of lad’s-love, which a moment before she had been holding to her lips; then, when I looked up, with my heart in my eyes, she slammed the window to, and a moment later I heard her calling her dog within.”
“Tush, tush, lad! A woman’s ways are like the maze at Hampton Court. If thou lose the clew, thou mayst wander round and round forever and be no nearer coming out. Why didst thou not ask her flat, would she have thee for her husband?”