Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 15, August, 1851Various
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 15, August, 1851
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
After clear sunny days the dews fall more heavily; and now, as the sun
set, the herbage was bathed in a vaporous haze--a dim mist rose around.
The young man seated himself beside her, and tried to draw the child to
his breast. Then she turned eagerly, indignantly, and pushed him aside
with jealous arms. He profaned the grave! He understood her with his
deep poet-heart, and rose. There was a pause.
Leonard was the first to break it.
"Come to your home with me, my child, and we will talk of _him_ by the
way."
"Him! Who are you? You did not know him!" said the girl, still with
anger. "Go away--why do you disturb me? I do no one harm. Go--go!"
"You do yourself harm, and that will grieve him if he sees you yonder!
Come!"
The child looked at him through her blinding tears, and his face
softened and soothed her.
"Go!" she said very plaintively, and in subdued accents. "I will but
stay a minute more. I--I have so much to say yet."
Leonard left the church-yard, and waited without; and in a short time
the child came forth, waved him aside as he approached her, and hurried
away. He followed her at a distance, and saw her disappear within the
inn.
CHAPTER V.
"Hip--hip--hurrah!" Such was the sound that greeted our young traveler
as he reached the inn-door--a sound joyous in itself, but sadly out of
harmony with the feelings which the child sobbing on the tombless grave
had left at his heart. The sound came from within, and was followed by
thumps and stamps, and the jingle of glasses. A strong odor of tobacco
was wafted to his olfactory sense. He hesitated a moment at the
threshold. Before him on benches under the beech-tree and within the
arbor, were grouped sundry athletic forms with "pipes in the liberal
air." The landlady, as she passed across the passage to the tap-room,
caught sight of his form at the doorway, and came forward. Leonard still
stood irresolute. He would have gone on his way, but for the child; she
had interested him strongly.
"You seem full, ma'am," said he. "Can I have accommodation for the
night?"
"Why, indeed, sir," said the landlady, civilly, "I can give you a
bed-room, but I don't know where to put you meanwhile. The two parlors
and the tap-room and the kitchen are all choke-ful. There has been a
great cattle-fair in the neighborhood, and I suppose we have as many as
fifty farmers and drovers stopping here."
"As to that, ma'am, I can sit in the bed-room you are kind enough to
give me; and if it does not cause you much trouble to let me have some
tea there, I should be glad; but I can wait your leisure. Do not put
yourself out of the way for me."
The landlady was touched by a consideration she was not much habituated
to receive from her bluff customers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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