She and I, Volume 1: A Love Story. A Life History.Hutcheson, John C. (John Conroy)
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She and I, Volume 1: A Love Story. A Life History.
Hutcheson, John C. (John Conroy)
Love stories
I used to go there, at first only occasionally; and then, when I found
Mrs Clyde did not quite eat me up, in spite of her cold manner, I went
regularly once a fortnight--always making my visit on the same day and
at the same hour of the evening; so, that Min learnt to expect me when
the evening came round, and told me that she would have recognised my
modest knock at the door, out of a hundred others.
Sometimes she and her mother and myself were all alone; but, more
frequently, other casual visitors would drop in, too, like me.
I liked the former evenings the best, however, as I had her all to
myself, comparatively speaking.
I could then watch her varying moods more attentively--the tender
solicitude and earnest affection she evinced for her mother:--the
piquant coquetry with which she treated me.
She had such dear little, characteristic ways about her--ways that were
quite peculiar to herself.
I got to know them all.
When she was specially interested in anything that one was saying, she
would lean forwards, with a deep, reflective look in her clear grey
eyes, in rapt attention, resting her little dimpled chin on her bent
hand:--when she disagreed with something you said, she would make such a
pretty quaint moue, tossing her head defiantly, and raise her curving
eyebrows in astonishment that you should dare to differ from her.
She seldom laughed--I hate to hear girls continually giggling and
guffawing at the merest nothings so long as they proceed from male lips!
When Min laughed, her laughter was just like the rippling of silvery
music and of the most catching, contagious nature. She generally only
smiled, at even the most humorous incidents; and her smile was the
sweetest I ever saw in anyone. It lit up her whole face with merriment,
giving the grey eyes the most bewitching expression, and bringing into
prominent notice a tiny, dear little dimple in her chin, which you might
not have previously observed.
Her smile it was that completed my captivation, that first time that I
saw her in church and lost my heart in a moment:--her smile was ever and
always her greatest charm.
Of course I remember all her little darling ways and coquetries.
Love is a great master of the art of mnemonics, and might be quoted by
Mr Stokes as one of the greatest "aids to memory" that is known.
Trifling trivialities, by others passed by unobserved, are graphically
jotted down with indelible ink in his cordal note-book--
"For indeed I know
Of no more subtle master under heaven,
Than is the maiden passion for a maid."
When no other people came in, Min would always, on the evening of my
visit, make a rule of turning out her workbox, and arranging its
contents over again--"in order," as she told me, although I had thought
it the picture of neatness and tidiness in its original state.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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