Still I remain stubbornly silent.
“We are not going to fight, at this time of
day, such old friends as we are?”
The red-anger light has died out of his eyes.
They look softer, and yet less languid, than I have
ever seen them before; and there is subdued appeal
and entreaty in his lowered voice. At the present
moment, I distinctly dislike him. I think him
altogether trying and odious, and I should be glad—yes,
glad, if Vick were to bite a piece out of his
leg; but, at the same time, I cannot deny that I have
seldom seen any thing comelier than the young man
who now stands before me, with the green woodland
lights flickering about the close-shorn beauty of his
face—he is well aware that his are not features
that need planting out —while a
lively emotion quickens all his lazy being.
“We are not old friends! Let me
pass!”
“New friends, then—_-friends_
at all events!” coming a step nearer, and speaking
without a trace of sneer, sloth, or languor.
“Not friends at all! Let me pass!”
“Not until you tell me my offense—not
until you own that we are friends!” (in a tone
of quick excitement, and almost of authority, that,
in him, is new to me).
“Then we shall stay here all night!” reply
I, with a fine obstinacy, plumping down, as I speak,
on the wayside grass, among the St. John’s-worts,
and the red arum-berries. In a moment he has stepped
aside, and is holding the stout purple bramble-stem
out of my way.
“Pass, then!” he says, in a tone of impatience,
frowning a little; “as you have said it, of
course you will stick to it—right or wrong—or
you would not be a woman; but, whether you confess
it or not, we are friends!”
“We are NOT!” cry I, resolute to have
the last word, as I spring up and fly past him, with
more speed than dignity, lest he should change his
mind, and again detain me.
The swallows are gone: the summer is done:
it is October. The year knows that I am in a
hurry, and is hasting with its shortened days—each
day marked by the loss of something fair—toward
the glad Christmas-time— Christmas that
will bring me back my Roger—that will set
him again at the foot of his table—that
will give me again the sound of his foot on the stairs,
the smile in his fond gray eyes. So I thought
yesterday, and to-day I have heard from him; heard
that though he is greatly loath to tell me so, yet
he cannot be back by Christmas; that I must hear the
joy-bells ring, and see the merry Christmas cheer alone.
It is true that he earnestly and insistantly begs
of me to gather all my people, father, mother, boys,
girls, around me. But, after all, what are father,
mother, boys, girls, to me? Father never was
any thing, I will do myself that justice, but at this
moment of sore disappointment as I lean my forehead
on the letter outspread on the table before me, and
dim its sentences with tears, I belittle even
the boys. No doubt that by-and-by I shall derive
a little solace from the thought of their company;
that when they come I shall even be inveigled into
some sort of hilarity with them; but at present, “No.”
