University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
A FEW MOMENTS OF TWO YOUNG PEOPLE'S LIVES.

TWO or three days passed before our young people,
who separated at Whitmonday Hill, met again.

The night had been rainy; but the morning
was delightful. An occasional cloud floated, like a hulk
from last night's battle, across the sky; but the blue, where
it appeared, was of the very bluest; and the air fittest for
breathing and being glad in. The high, rocky walls of
coast, the ridges and the far-off woods, were as fresh and
clear as could be; the earth was cool and strong under
foot, and one might feel the wish-wash of the water where
he could not hear it.

Skipper George had part of his old father's garden, on
the slope below the ridgy boundary of the little plain
on which his own house stood, and Skipper George's
daughter, like other maidens of the land, was early busy
in it, full of the morning freshness and beauty of the day.
A step drew near, and James Urston, coming to the fence,
wished her “good morning,” and lifted his hat, gracefully,
as if he had had his schooling somewhere abroad.

“Oh, James!” said she, looking up, with her face all
glowing, “you hurt yourself the other day!”

“No. I've got over it before this; it was nothing.”
His face, too, had its fresh touch of brightness and spirit
from the morning.

“It might have been something, though. You shouldn't
have run the risk for such a trifle.”

“There was no risk; and if there had been, it wasn't
for little Janie only that I got the `shawl.'”

Lucy's bright eyes perhaps looked brighter. “Are you
going out on the water to-day?” she asked, changing the
subject.

“Yes, To-day, and To-morrow, and To-morrow, I suppose;
but I hope, not always!”

“Would you go to Bay-Harbor again?”

“Never on the old errand, Lucy; I can have a place
in Worner, Grose & Co.'s house; I think Miss Dare
must have spoken about it.”

“Did you know,” said Lucy, drawing nearer to the
fence, and bashfully hesitating, “that she had spoken to
the Minister about making me mistress in a school?”
The maiden blushed, as she spoke, and very prettily.

“And he will; won't he?” said Urston, interestedly,
but rather gravely.

“Oh! I don't know; he told me that he might be able
to soon; but I don't think there's any place for me,”
she answered, busying herself with the garden.

“Yes; and more than that, by and by!” said he, decidedly.—A
nice ear could have detected a little sadness
in the tone with which he said these words of happy
augury.

She looked hastily up.

“And some of these days you'll be a merchant!” she
said.

“Something, please God; something, Lucy, that wants
mind in it, I hope, and that one can put some heart in,
too; something that will give one chances to think, and
learn, after having once begun as I have.”

“Oh, you'll go on learning, I'm sure,” she said; “you
know so much, and you're so fond of it.”

The morning was fresh and clear, the water bright and
living.

“You think a good deal of my knowing a little Latin;
but only think of what other people know!—this very
Father Nicholas at Bay-Harbor. You know ten times
as much that's worth knowing as I do!”

“Oh! no,” said the maiden, “it wasn't the Latin,
only—”

“I know the `Hours,' as they call them,” he said,
smiling, “and some of the `Lives of Saints.'”

“Oh, no! all those books that the lawyer lent you.”

“If it hadn't been for those, I should have been worse
yet;—Father Terence hadn't many;—yes, I've read
enough to want to know more;—but the pleasantest
reading I ever had was reading your English Bible with
you those two times.”

“Was it, really?” the maiden asked, with a glad look,
in her simplicity, and then she blushed a little.

“Yes; I've got every word of what we read, as if it
were written in my mind deeper than ever those Northmen
cut their words in the rock.”

She was silent a moment, looking beautifully thoughtful
out into the air; but then suddenly recalled herself,
and said,—

“But they cut their words deeply, to stand till now,
ages after, with the sun shining on them, and the storm
beating against them, and the ice freezing over them,
year after year,—if they are there, as people say.”

“There are writings in the rock; but I don't know if
there are any of the Northmen's. It doesn't matter
much; no one sees or cares for them.”

“Men oughtn't to forget them!” she said, with glistening
eyes.

“Poor men!” said Urston, in his turn, “they hoped
for something better! But hopes are happy things while
we have them, and disappointed hope doesn't hurt dead
men. It's the living that feel.”

The young man said this as if he had begun a man's
life, such as it is, most often. Perhaps he thought only
of one disappointment, that at Bay-Harbor.

Lucy was busy again with the garden.

By and by she asked, “What do you think they
wrote?”

“Perhaps only their names; perhaps the names of
some other people that they cared for at home; and the
time when they came.”

“There may be grave-stones as old,” Lucy said, “but
this seems stranger, cut by strange men on a great cliff
over the sea;—I should like to look for it.”

“You know they say it's somewhere on the face of
Mad-Head,”[1] said Urston; then looking towards the
ridge, he said, “Here comes my father!” and wished her
hastily “Good-bye!”