“Well, well, I have had my day,” sighed Mr. Fletcher, about a quarter of an hour later, as he sat on a stump watching with tearful eyes his son, whose vigorous young arms were now sending the boat upstream as rapidly as he himself had sent it down with the current. “No, I must not lament; Mabel is worth a dozen city flirts, and I hope that Harry will fall in love with her.”
“Is it not a beautiful view from this knoll?” spoke a voice, presently, close behind him; and, turning, Mr. Fletcher beheld Mabel’s mother, who had approached him unheard over a bed of moss.
“It is indeed!” he replied. “And the most beautiful object in the whole landscape is your daughter.”
“Well, Mabel is a jewel, and no mistake,” continued Mrs. Willey. “And right glad am I that she and your son are enjoying themselves together on the river.” But even as she spoke a strange thought flashed upon the mother, for she perceived that the eyes of her old suitor were moistened with tears.
“Can it be possible,” she said to herself, “that he, too, is falling in love with Mabel? Well, I hope not; for there will be a poor chance for him while young Harry is about.”
We need scarcely say that for Harry Fletcher, Jr., this was only the first of many pleasant excursions on the river with Mabel; and day by day the recollections of his former life—the dinner-parties, the operas, the balls he had gone to, the pretty girls he had danced with—grew dimmer and dimmer in his mind’s eye. More than once, too, did Mrs. Willey discover Harry’s father watching the happy couple from the stump on the knoll.
“How strangely things turn out!” spoke Mr. Fletcher, a fortnight later, when Mabel’s mother once more approached him over the bed of moss.
“Perhaps you are thinking of just what I am thinking,” returned Mrs. Willey. “If so, it is indeed strange, and, I may add, a most romantic way of taking revenge on me; eh, Harry?”
“Ah! little did I dream of this the day when I proposed to you and you refused me,” continued Mr. Fletcher, shaking his head. “It seems only yesterday. Yet here is a son of mine, with beard on his chin, as much in love with your daughter as ever I was with you.”
“And I guess there’ll not be any nay spoken this time,” answered Mrs. Willey.