"If you had any, Del."
"There's the secret drawer,—that would be capital for anything I wanted to keep perfectly secret."
"Such as what'?"
"Oh, I don't know what, now; but I might possibly have."
"I can't think of anything you would want to shut up in that drawer," said Laura, laughing at my mysterious face, which she said looked about as secret as a hen-coop with the chickens all flying out between the slats. "In the first place, you haven't any secrets, and are not likely to have; and next, you will show us (Mr. Sampson and me) the drawer and spring the first thing you do. And I shall look there every week, to see if there's anything hid there!"
"Oh, bah!" said I to myself; "Sumner told me that cabinet was just fifty dollars."
Something—I know not what, and probably never shall know—made me rise from my rocking-chair, and walk to the chamber-window. At that moment, a man with a green bag in his hand walked swiftly by, touched his hat as he passed, and smiled as he turned the corner out of sight. A little spasm, half painful in its pleasure, contracted my chest, and then set out at a thrilling pace to the end of my fingers. Then a sense of triumphant fulness, in my heart, on my lip, in my eyes. Not the name, but the nature passed,—strong to wrestle, determined to win. Not the body, but the soul of a man, passed across my field of vision, armed for earth-strife, gallantly breasting life. What mattered the shape or the name,—whether handsome or with a fine fortune? How these accidents fell off from the soul, as it beamed in the loving eye and firm lip!
"The moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must" lead "me."
And gently as the fawn follows the forest-keeper does my heart follow his, to the green pastures and still waters where he loves to lead. I did not think whether he had a name.
"Are you considering what to put into the secret drawer, Del?"