“Happiness?” echoed the girl, in a surprised voice. “Why?”
“When you are married.”
“I am not going to be married,” said the girl, “I told Bert so this afternoon. Good-by.”
The skipper actually let her get nearly to the top of the ladder before he regained his presence of mind. Then, in obedience to a powerful tug at the hem of her skirt, she came down again, and accompanied him meekly back to the cabin.
[HIS LORDSHIP]
FARMER ROSE sat in his porch smoking an evening pipe. By his side, in a comfortable Windsor chair, sat his friend the miller, also smoking, and gazing with half-closed eyes at the landscape as he listened for the thousandth time to his host's complaints about his daughter.
“The long and the short of it is, Cray,” said the farmer, with an air of mournful pride, “she's far too good-looking.”
Mr. Cray grunted.
“Truth is truth, though she's my daughter,” continued Mr. Rose, vaguely. “She's too good-looking. Sometimes when I've taken her up to market I've seen the folks fair turn their backs on the cattle and stare at her instead.”