style="font-size:15px;"> "Simpleton! that is not what you were intended to say. You should have asked the cause of so singular a wish, and then I had a pretty little speech all ready for you,—a veritable compliment"
"It is well I did not ask, then. Mamma does not approve of compliments, and perhaps it would have made me vain."
"Incorrigible! Why did you not ask me what the speech was, and thus give me an opportunity to relieve myself. Why, a body might die of a plethora of flattery, if he had nobody but you to discharge it against."
"He must take care, then, that the supply does not exceed the demand."
"Political economy, upon my word! What shall we have next?"
"Domestic, I suppose you would like. Men generally, indeed, prefer it to the other, I am told."
"Ah, Ivy, Ivy! little you know about men, my child!"
He leaned back in his seat and was silent for some minutes. Ivy did not care to interrupt his thinking. Presently he said,—
"Ivy, how old are you?"
"I shall be seventeen the last day of this month."
A short pause.
"And then eighteen."
"And then nineteen."
"And then twenty. In three years you will be twenty."
"Horrid old, isn't it?"
He turned his head, and looked down upon her with what Ivy thought a curious kind of smile, but only said,—
"You must not say 'horrid' so much."
By-and-by Ivy grew rather tired of sitting silent and watching the rustle of the leaves, which hid every other prospect; she turned her face a little so that she could look at him. He sat with folded arms, looking straight ahead; and she thought his face wore a troubled expression. She felt as if she would like very much to smooth out the wrinkles in his forehead and run her fingers through his hair, as she sometimes did for her father. She had a great mind to ask him if she should; then she reflected that it might make him nervous. Then she wondered if he had forgotten her lessons, and how long they were to sit there. Determined, at length, to have a change of some kind, she said, softly,—
"Mr. Clerron!"
He roused himself suddenly, and stood up.
"I thought, perhaps, you had a headache."
"No, Ivy. But this is not climbing the hill of science, is it?"
"Not so much as it is climbing the piazza."
"Suppose we take a vacation to-day, and investigate the state of the atmosphere?"
"Yes, Sir, I am ready."
Ivy did not fully understand the nature of his proposition; but if he had proposed to "put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes," she would have said and acted, "Yes, Sir, I am ready," just the same.
He took up the basket of grapes which he had gathered, and led the way through the window, down-stairs. Ivy waited for him at the hall-door, while he carried the grapes to Mrs. Simm; then he joined her again and proposed to walk through the woods a little while, before Ivy went home.
"You must know, my docile pupil, that I am going to the city to-morrow, on business, to be gone a week or two. So, as you must perforce take a vacation then, why, we may as well begin to vacate today, and enjoy it."
"I am sorry you are going away."
"You are? That is almost enough to pay me for going. Why are you sorry?"
"Because I shall not see you for a week; and I have become so used to you, that somehow I don't seem to know what to do with a day without you; and then the cars may run off the track and kill you or hurt you, or you may get the smallpox, or a great many things may happen."
"And suppose some of these terrible things should happen,—the last, for instance,—what would you do?"
"I? I should advise you to send for the doctor at once."
Mr. Clerron laughed.
"So you would not come and nurse me, and take care of me, and get me well again?"
"No, because I should then be in danger of taking it myself and giving it to papa and mamma; besides, they would not let me, I am quite sure."
"So you love your papa and mamma better than"–
He stopped abruptly. Ivy finished for him.
"Better than words can tell. Papa particularly. Mamma, somehow, seems strong of herself, and don't depend upon me; but papa,—oh, you don't know how he is to me! I think, if I should die, he would die of grief. I have, I cannot help having, a kind of pity for him, he loves me so."
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