"Excuse me," said the Captain, also rising,—"excuse me, if I have been impertinent on so slight an acquaintance."
He had his hat in his hand, and walked towards the door.
"Deuse take the fellow! can't he stay patiently here five minutes?" thought Barbara. She dropped the rose she had been holding. The Captain picked it up and offered it.
"Keep it, Sir, if you think it worth while," said Barbara,—driven to this incipient impropriety by the vague apprehensions excited by her father's letter.
"Thank you," replied the Captain, so taken by surprise that he forgot his military laurels, and showed a faint heart by a blush.
Barbara esteemed it a very charming symptom; and as the Captain, with his one unwounded arm, tried rather awkwardly to put the flower in the buttonhole of his waistcoat, she stepped up with a "Let me aid you"; and, taking from her own dress a pin, fastened the rose nicely as near as she could to the beating heart of the imperilled soldier. Alas! if his thoughts had been put into words, he would have soliloquized, "Look here, Captain, I'm afraid you are deporting yourself very much like a simpleton. Pluck up a spirit, man!"
"There! I'm sure 't is very becoming," quoth Barbara, mischievously.
"You see how convenient it is to have two hands," returned the Captain. "And your having two hands, Miss Dinwiddie, reminds me that your piano stands open, showing its teeth, as if it, smiling, wanted to say, 'Come, play on me.'"
"What a lucky idea!" thought Barbara. "Now I have him, and will hold him. He shall get enough of it. When will pa come, I wonder?—Are you fond of music, Captain Penrose?"
"Yes; I used to be a performer before I was disabled."