“We are both so well suited,” said Alice. “To a matter-of-fact body like me, Mr. Frobisher—”
“Oh, Alice, he is just too charming, with his quaint, humorous ways; and then so devoted!”
“Do you think so?”
“Why, the poor man is just dying with love, and—”
“But just think of your affair, Mary! When are you going to let him tell you who he is? Oh, I’ll tell you. Suppose we let them both come up to Richmond at the same time to interview our respective and respected papas. Oh, won’t it be dreadful!” And with that they fell on each other’s necks and giggled.
“Mr. Frobisher says he will be hanged if he speaks to my father. He says he thinks it a liberty to ask any man for his daughter; so he intends to speak to mother. Bashful? O-o-o-oh!”
Charley and the Don, too, had their confabulations, but how was any one to find out what they said? But a merrier, jollier soul than the latter it would have been hard to find. (I believe my grandfather would have been somewhat scandalized at the way he profaned the Guarnerius with his jigs, had not Charley made casual mention of the gigas of Corelli and the old Italian school; which seemed to lend a certain air of classicity to their homely Virginia descendants.)
These four, then, were happy. But upon the horizon of Mary’s dreams there hung a speck of cloud. It was no bigger than a man’s hand, but its jagged edges, splotching the rosy east, marred the perfection of the dawn.
To say what that cloud was, brings up a subject upon which I touch with extreme reluctance.
A Bushwhacker discussing the problems of religion,—what will be said of him? Love—feeling my inability to depict that, I accepted the kind offices of our friend Alice. But where, among the bishops and other clergy—regular officers,—am I to find one willing to be associated with a guerilla like myself? Who among them would write a few chapters for this book? But the chapters must be written.