Alice Wilde: The Raftsman's Daughter. A Forest RomanceVictor, Metta Victoria Fuller
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Alice Wilde: The Raftsman's Daughter. A Forest Romance
Victor, Metta Victoria Fuller
Logging -- Fiction; Love stories; Sawmills -- Michigan -- Fiction; Young men -- New York (State) -- New York -- Fiction
They went back into the forest, through which thundered, ever and anon,
the crash of a falling tree; for many men were busy cutting timber for
another raft, on which, at its completion, Philip was to return to
Center City. His business would not have detained him more than three
or four days, but he was in no haste; he wanted to hunt and fish a
little, and he liked the novelty of the idea of floating down the river
on a raft of logs in company with a score of rough fellows. Although
David Wilde sawed up some of his timber himself, his old-fashioned mill
was not equal to the supply, and he sent the surplus down to the steam
saw-mills, one of which was owned by Philip and his partner.
It called forth all his affability to conquer the shyness of his
pretty guide, who at last dared to look full into his face with those
brilliant blue eyes, and to tell him where the brooks made the sweetest
music, where the fawns came oftenest to drink, where the violets
lingered the latest, and where there was a grape-vine swing.
Both of them looked very happy when they came in, just in time to meet
Mr. Wilde at the supper-table, who had been at the mill all day. _He_
did not seem in such good spirits. Some new thought troubled him. His
keen, gray eyes scanned the countenance of his child, as if searching
for something hitherto undiscovered; and then turned suspiciously to
the stranger, to mark if he, too, held the same truth. For the first
time it occurred to him, that his "cub," his pet, was no longer a
little girl--that he might have done something fatally foolish in
bringing that fine city aristocrat to his cabin. Had he not always
hated and despised these dandified caricatures of men?--despised
their vanity, falsehood, and affectation?--hated their vices, their
kid-gloves, their perfumed handkerchiefs, and their fashionable
nonsense? Yet, pleased with one of them, and on a mere matter of
business, he had, without the wisdom of a fool, much less of a father,
brought one of that very class to his house. How angry he was with
himself his compressed lip alone revealed, as he sharply eyed his
guest. Yet the laws of hospitality were too sacred with him to allow of
his showing any rudeness to his guest, as a means of getting rid of him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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