If you
tell him, or if I tell him, or your mother,--who is the proper person,
and he chooses to hold you to your promise, then, Mary, I have no more
to say. I shall sail in a few weeks again, and carry your image forever
in my heart;--nobody can take that away; that dear shadow will be the
only wife I shall ever know."
At this moment Miss Prissy came rattling along towards the door,
talking--we suspect designedly--on quite a high key. Mary hastily
said,--
"Wait, James,--let me think,--tomorrow is the Sabbath-day. Monday I
will send you word, or see you."
And when Miss Prissy returned into the best room, James was sitting at
one window and Mary at another,--he making remarks, in a style of most
admirable commonplace, on a copy of Milton's "Paradise Lost," which he
had picked up in the confusion of the moment, and which, at the time
Mrs. Katy Scudder entered, he was declaring to be a most excellent
book,--a really, truly, valuable work.
Mrs. Scudder looked keenly from one to the other, and saw that Mary's
cheek was glowing like the deepest heart of a pink shell, while, in all
other respects, she was as cold and calm.
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