72
CROOKED-EYES.
muttered something that sounded to me very much like “Good riddance!” but Charlie construed it otherwise, and, after a few words, was out of sight. Becky and I proceeded to the arbor, where, sitting down, she laid her head on my shoulder, and burst into tears. “I am so sorry I was so cross to Charlie,” she sobbed, “but I couldn’t help it, and I was determined he shouldn’t know I cared anything about his going away.”
I soothed her as host I could, and in half an hour we were gayly discussing a plan for a pic¬ nic. “There won’t be much fun without Charlie, to be sure,” said Becky, mournfully, as she tied on her sun-bonnet,” but I don’t intend to mope to death this summer.”
Daring Charlie’s first and second vacations, Becky was away visiting, and ever after he spent them at his uncle’s, it being much nearer than his own home. So years passed on, and the two school-mates never met.
Charlie scribbled a few lines to “Butterfly” once in a while, and in one of his notes he confidentially told me that “cousin Rose was a regular little Venus, and he was sorely tempted to fall in love.” I showed the letter to Becky: she turned slightly pale, and, pleading a head-ache, she went home, taking the precious document with her. I have never seen it since.
Time passed, and Becky and I were nineteen. Three years before we had left “Madam Selkirk’s” for a fashionable boarding-school, and were spending the first summer after our “finishing up,” as Becky called it, in rambling through the Woods, and trying to awe our simple villagers by a display of our learning. Mamma came to the wise conclusion that Becky was an unprc Stable companion, and determined to banish me from Graggsville. Accordingly, preparations were made for my spending a few weeks with an aunt of my mother’s.
“It will be a very few weeks, I can assure you, Becky,” I said, as we were sitting under the grape arbor, the evening before we were to start; “I shall horrify aunt Jerusha by my romping propensities, and she will conclude that home is the best place for me: so you’ll see me back before long.”
“Here’s a letter for you, sis,” and brother tossed it into my lap. It was from Charlie. He had graduated, or been “expelled,” as he wrote, and was “coming home to play tag with Becky and Butterfly.”
“I wish aunt Jerusha was in the Dead Sea!” said I, after reading the letter aloud. “Well, I hope you will make a conquest, Becky; I always thought Charlie fancied you more than he did me. As for myself, aunt Jerusha hasn't more than a dozen grown-up sons, and—and—who knows but what she may fancy me for a daughter-in-law!”
“Generous girl!” said Becky, laughing, while a bright color suffused her cheeks.
I took a second look at her. Really “Crooked- eyes” was growing handsome. Her organs of sight were only crooked enough to look roguish, and her red hair had changed to a pretty auburn.
Well, I started before sunrise the next morning, and in the evening was comfortably seated in aunt Jerusha’s parlor, discussing picture-books with cousin Frank, aunt’s “third sweet son.” A pair of black eyes haunted my dream that night, and—well, after a visit of two months, I started for Craggsville, having promised Aunt Jerusha and Frank that I would come back soon, and live with them all my life.
The morning after my arrival home, Charlie Dean rushed into our little parlor, and, after kissing me, and dancing round the room awhile, threw himself on the sofa, exclaiming,
“Well, Butterfly, I am going to commit matrimony.”
“Ah! who is to be made so extremely miserable?”
“Crooked-eyes, of course, you wicked puss!” he replied, gayly, and just then Becky came in.
“You hateful thing, you!” said she to Charlie, after she had nearly smothered am with kisses, “I think you are real mean.”
“I wanted to tell you first, myself,” she said, as, after Charlie had gone, we sat in the parlor, exchanging confidences. “However, it don’t make much difference: and I am so delighted to think aunt Jerusha fancied you; but I never it dreamed of such a thing as Charlie’s loving me did you, Moll?”
“Well, it is rather singular, Crooked-eyes; but then, you know there’s no accounting for taster and Charlie is somewhat eccentric.”
For which saucy reply I had my ears pinched, Becky told Charlie all about aunt Jerusha and Frank, whereupon the said gentleman declared his cup of happiness was overflowing; and Frank coming to our village, in a week or two, for the purpose of arranging some “business matters” with papa, and having “passed examination” creditably, we had lots of fun together. We were all married at the same time, for Charlie said “there was no use in making two fusses, and he always believed in killing two birds with one stone.” I do not intend to tell how becoming orange blossoms and white blonde were to Miss Becky, or how her “crooked eyes” looked almost beautiful with the world of love that
