Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878.Various
History
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878.
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
Harry laughed loud and long: "That would be a good joke! As if I cared
for Georgy Lenox! But it does make me angry to see Jack so taken up with
her. Did you see her new shoes?"
There could be no question of that.
"Jack bought them for her," said Harry with angry emphasis. "He spends
all his money on her, and I think it is a shame. She told him at first
she could not come to-day, because she had nothing to wear on her feet
except thin slippers. What does Jack do but post off to John Edwards and
buy her a pair of boots at once!" He paused a moment, then burst out:
"Just look at them!"
Georgy had flung her flowers at Jack, and having jumped across the
little brook which meandered through the wood, now nodded at him
defiantly, tossing her long curls, while her eyes sparkled and her color
rose. He too sprang over the stream, with pretended anger, and she gave
a little shriek and flew down the path, with him in pursuit. Jack was
clumsy and not built for speed, while Georgy had the spring of a fawn;
but I suspect she was willing to be caught, for when we next gained a
glimpse of them she was sitting on a stump fanning herself with her
broad-brimmed hat, which had fallen off, while he was leaning against a
tree looking at her.
"He has kissed her--I know he has," Harry whispered to me with a bitter
look. "I would die before I would kiss her when she behaved like that!"
I was in a sort of tremor. I was too young to be in love in the ordinary
sense of the phrase, but I was aghast at the thought of the bloom of her
cheeks and lips being plucked like roses in a hedgerow. She was precious
to my imagination, yet, for all her every-day reality, scarcely nearer
to my aspirations than Lady Edith Plantagenet or Ellen, Lady of the
Lake.
"I don't care," muttered Harry doggedly--"I don't care. I dare say he
means to marry her when he grows up, but I don't care."
"Floyd," called out Georgy, "can't you show me another bird's nest?"
Now I knew at least a hundred birds' nests in these woods. All Wednesday
afternoon I had nestled here in the thickets and watched the little
builders hopping from moss to bough and twig, and had learned all their
secrets. I knew that by the great rock just behind where she was sitting
was a ledge with shelving sides overhung with moss, and that there, so
cunningly wrought and hidden that none but a trained eye could ever have
discovered it, was an exquisite nest formed of lichens. Half ashamed of
disclosing such a sacred confidence, I led Georgy up to it. Last
Wednesday it was barely finished: now there were three eggs in it. It
was a wood-pewee's nest, and while I let her peep the mother-bird flew
toward us with a shrill pathetic cry.
"Hush, you horrid thing!" cried Georgy to the alarmed bird, that circled
about us with cries growing every moment more piercing.--"Is not that
perfectly sweet? I never saw anything prettier."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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