The Argosy — page 298: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

282 Anne. III. Was it over! Anne Lewis reckoned without her host. I was running in to Maythorn Bank the next moming, when I saw the shimmer of Anne’s white garden-bonnet and her morning dress amidst the raspberry-bushes, and turned aside to greet her. She had a basin in her hand, picking the fruit, and the hot tears were running down her cheeks. Conceal her distress she could not; any attempt would have been worse than futile. “ Oh, Johnny, she is going to marry him!” cried she, with a burst of sobs. “Going to marry him !—who? what?” I asked, taking the basin from her hand : for I declare that the truth did not strike me. ‘* She is. Mrs. Podd. She is going to marry papa.” For a moment she held her face against the apple-tree. The words confounded me. More real grief I had never seen. My heart ached for her. “‘Don’t think me selfish,” she said, turning presently, trying to sub- due the sobs and wiping the tears away. “I hope I am not that: or undutiful. It is not for myself that I grieve ; indeed it is not; but for him.” I knew that. “Tf I could but think it would ‘be for his happiness! But oh, I fear it will not be. Something seems to tell me that it will not. And if— he should be—uncomfortable afterwards—miserable afterwards |—I think the distress would kill me.” “Ts it true, Anne? How did you hear it ?” “True! Too true, Johnny. At breakfast this morning papa said, ‘We shall be dull to-day without our friends, Anne.’ I told him I hoped not, and that I would go out with him, or read to him, or do anything else he liked: and I reminded him of his small stock of choice books that he used to be so fond of. ‘Yes, yes, we shall be very dull, you and I alone in this strange house,’ he resumed. ‘ Ihave been thinking for some time we should be, Anne, and so I have asked that dear, kind, lively woman to come to us for good.’ I did not understand him ; I did not indeed, Johnny ; and papa went on to ex- plain. ‘You must know that I allude to Mrs. Podd, Anne,’ he said. ‘When I saw her so charmed with this house yesterday, and we were talking about my future loneliness in it—and she lamented it, even to ‘tears—one word led to another, and I felt encouraged to venture to ask her to share it and be my wife. And so, my dear, it is all settled ; and I trust it will be for the happiness of us all She is a most delightful woman, and will make the sunshine of any home.’ I wish I could think so !” concluded Anne. gle comicbooks.com