“That tiresome girl,”—and, choking an exclamation, he strode back to the bridge. She had jumped into the river to annoy him. No, she had not gone herself, she had sent the big black dog who was swimming composedly about. The fool—he would do anything she told him. She was in hiding herself—he could see her brown head under one of the seats of the bridge.
The tired man flung himself down on the opposite seat, and fixed his eyes on the head. How brown, nay, how yellow it looked. He got up and peered down at it. It was not his little sweetheart curled up there. He was gazing at a bunch of yellow flowers.
He turned hastily to the river. There was her cap floating on the water. He became sick and faint. There had been only one splash, yet where was she? Every tender memory of his life, every ambition for the future, clustered around that brown head. He would go and get her. He would search in the grass of the river bank, he would—his head fell on his arm, and a strange, delicious forgetfulness crept over him. He was going to faint for the first time in his life. He struggled against it, first violently, then feebly, then his head fell on his breast and he knew no more.
CHAPTER II.
SCHOOLMA’AM AND WIFE, BUT NEVER A MOTHER.
While the sailor and the young girl were having their conversation in the garden, two people who were intensely interested in their movements were taking their breakfast in one of the back rooms of the plain, old-fashioned house.
One of them was a fat, testy man, with large and prominent watery gray eyes, who was irritably chipping the top from an egg, and varying this occupation by casting frequent and semi-displeased glances through the open window. Mr. Israel Danvers was master of this house, owner of the principal store in the village across the meadows, and husband of the woman with the large, cool, comfortable face, who sat opposite him pouring his coffee.
“I wonder what that Fordyce is up to now?” he muttered, with a whole volley of glances outside.
“I don’t know,” responded Mrs. Danvers, tranquilly, “but I imagine it’s something important. Otherwise he’d wait for lamplight.”
“What do you mean by important?”
“I mean marriage.”
Mr. Danvers fretfully scattered his egg-shell on the table-cloth. “Nina is too young to marry.”
“She is eighteen.”
“She is too young, I say. She is nothing but a butterfly.”
“She is certainly frivolous,” said Mrs. Danvers, with a judicial air.
“Would you have her a suspicious old woman?” retorted her husband. “She’s got the b-best heart and the s-sweetest disposition—she’s a fine girl,” he concluded, lamely. He could not be eloquent, but he felt deeply, and his prominent eyes watered in a sincere and affectionate manner as he went on with his breakfast.
“Where’s my coffee?” he asked, presently.
Mrs. Danvers started slightly, and passed him the forgotten cup.
“You’ve half filled it with sugar,” he said, “I guess you were dreaming when you poured it.”
Again she said nothing, and quietly poured him another cup; but he persisted, “What was you thinking of, Melinda?”
“I was pondering on the mysteries of the law of mutual selection, if you must know,” she said, calmly.
He surveyed her suspiciously. She had been a school-teacher before she married him, and her education had been greatly superior to his own. Comprehending his state of mind, she went on, kindly: “With regard to Fordyce and Nina. He lands in a state where there are one hundred and fifty thousand more women than men. The most of those women have good eyes, ears, noses, fine heads of hair, yet he comes rushing over the border into New Hampshire.”
“I’ll venture to say there isn’t another Nina in Massachusetts,” said the fat man.
“I agree with you there. She is unique.”
“Do you think she likes Fordyce well enough to marry him?” he asked, anxiously.
Mrs. Danvers became thoughtful, until an impatient movement from her husband forced an opinion from her. “I don’t know, Israel. I guess she likes him better than she pretends to, and you’ve no occasion to worry about her marrying him. Wild horses wouldn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do; but I don’t know all her mind about Fordyce. She understands me better than I understand her.”
Surprised at this unlooked-for admission, he said, agreeably, “She’s a clever little coot.”
“Clever—she’s the smartest girl I ever saw. She’s too smart. I’m afraid Fordyce will have trouble with her.”
“Clever, how clever?” interposed Mr. Danvers, up in arms for his favourite. “You don’t mean to say she’s sneaky?”
“No, not sneaky,” said Mrs. Danvers, in deep thought; “not sneaky, but shy and nervous, and pretending she’s got plenty of coolness when she hasn’t, and more one for getting her way secretly than openly. And she’s full of tricks and moods and quirks of all kinds. You don’t understand her, Israel.”
Mr. Danvers did not know whether to be gratified or annoyed by his wife’s expansive state of mind. She had never before spoken just so freely of their adopted daughter. “I don’t try to understand her,” he said, doubtfully. “I just take her as she is.”
“Fordyce don’t. He wants to know every thought in her mind,” proceeded Mrs. Danvers, “and thinks he knows them, too, but sometimes he’s too sure.”
“He’s too short with her, too short,” observed Mr. Danvers, pettishly. “He ought to take into account that she’s got a will of her own.”
“He’s a primitive man; he’d kill any one that took her away from him. You see he’s got nothing but her.”
Mr. Danvers was silent. He did not know what she meant by a primitive man.
“He could step right out into the woods and live with savages,” explained Mrs. Danvers; “and if he wanted a woman he’d knock her down with his club and carry her off to his cave with the best of them.”
Mr. Danvers treated her to an exhibition of open-mouthed astonishment and disapproval. “Melinda, are you crazy to talk of such goings-on?”
“Men don’t do such things nowadays,” she said, soothingly, “but there’s a heap of wild nature in a good many of us. I guess you’d like to turn Fordyce out this very minute.”
“You bet your life I would,” said the fat man, with energy, and without premeditation. “I’d send him flying down that road. He’s too old for Nina. Let her marry one of the boys around here.”
“Do you know what she calls the Rubicon Meadows boys?” asked Mrs. Danvers, dryly.
“No,
