A PAIR OF STOCKINGS.
FROM THE ARMY.
Kate was sitting by the window. I was sitting beside her. It may be well to state here that Kate was a young lady, and that I am a young gentleman. Kate had large, lustrous dark eyes, which just then were covered with fringed, drooping eyelashes. She had braids of dark hair wreathed around her head, a soft pink color in her cheeks, and a rosebud mouth, womanly, fresh, and lovely. Kate was clad in a pink muslin dress, with a tiny white ruffle around her white throat. She was armed with four steely needles, which were so many bright arrows that pierced my heart through and through. Over her fingers glided a small blue thread, which proceeded from the ball of yarn I held in my hand.
Kate was knitting a stocking, and surely, irrevocably she was taking me captive; already I felt myself entangled by those small threads.
We were the inmates of a boarding house. Kate was a new boarder. I had known her but a few weeks.
The evening was warm, and I took up a palm-leaf fan, and fanned her. She thanked me. I looked at her white hands, gliding in and out under the blue yarn; there were no rings on those fingers. I thought how nicely one would look upon that ring finger—a tiny gold circlet, with two hearts joined upon it, and on the inside two names written—hers and mine. Then I thought of Kate as my wife, always clad in a pink muslin dress, always with her hair in just such glossy braids, and knitting stockings to the end of time.
'Kate shall be my wife,' I said to myself, in rash pride, as I fanned her more energetically. I did not know that the way to a woman's heart was more intricate than a labyrinth; but I had the clue in the blue yarn which I held in my hand. I little knew what I undertook. Kate was shy as a wild deer, timid as a fawn, with an atmosphere of reserve about her which one could not well break through.
'For whom are you knitting those stockings, Miss Kate?' I asked.
'For a soldier, Mr. Armstrong,' she replied, her eye kindling with patriotism.