“Oh, a notion! I dare say. Girls live on notions, bonbons, sugar-plums, taffy, and what not; a pound of sweetened flattery to every half ounce of wholesome truth. But laying all notions aside, you will always come, Mellville, when I send for you.”
“How dare you,” began Mell, nettled to the quick and purposed to give him an emphatic piece of her mind, and then ignominiously breaking down, constrained, dismayed, crimsoning to the tips of her ears, paling to the curves of her lips, and wishing she had died before she left the farm-house that morning.
“And now I have offended you,” said Jerome drawing nearer, “and I did not mean to do that, pretty one! I cannot help teasing you, sometimes, because when you are teased your face has that innocent, grieved expression of a thwarted child, which I do so dearly love to see. And I must, perforce, do something in self-defence, you have been so cruel to me.” His tones were low, now, and as oily as a lubricating life-buoy. “I have waited for you one hour each day; I have gone away after every waiting, desolate and unhappy. Don’t you know, when two people think of each other as we do, when two people love each other as we do, that separation is the worst form of misery? Then why have you been so cruel, Mell?”
Peeping under the fluted archway of the white sun-bonnet for an answer, his face came in dangerous nearness to its wearer; their quickened breath united in a symphony of sweet sighs, their quickened pulses throbbed in a unison of reciprocal emotion.
One moment more, and—Mell stood off at some little distance, looking back roguishly at the figure kneeling alone beside the old stump, with outstretched arms tenderly embracing naught, and stealthy lips defrauded of their prey.
Mr. Devonhough did mind a losing game such as this. To be made to feel foolish and to look foolish, was more than he could tolerate under any conjuncture of circumstances. He extricated himself as speedily and as gracefully as possible.
“Miss Creecy!”
“Mr. Devonhough!”
“You will probably treat me with ordinary civility, at the time of our next meeting.”
“And you will probably do the same toward me.”