The Argosy — page 250: what you’re looking at

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

"1Q2 A Country Heart. an apparently fine day, and an introduction was easily effected, Miss Verey graciously saying she had heard of him from his old friend Mrs. Briscoe. Under the umbrella, which the young man was obliged to hold (so strong is the wind in this locality when a sudden squall arises !) Harry Tredennick found himself most wonderfully at his ease, considering that he had never in all his twenty years held a téte-a-téte with a pretty girl before. Perhaps it was the girl’s doing that they so soon made friends, for as every intelligent woman knows there is no surer way of gaining a young man’s admiration than by leading him un- consciously on to his own strongest ground. Kate Verey could no more help trying to make every man she met like her than she could help her hair curling. Consequently her tact led her to talk of the country and the coast, where Harry Tredennick was as much at home as a young seaman ; of the Park, where his grandmother lived (Miss Verey had heard of “ Madam” in Torferry, and knew that “ the family ” had been squires of Tredennick for six hundred years) ; of the Tors and moors and coves that she should like to see in the neigh- bourhood, but scarcely knew how to compass. By the time they had reached Myrtle Bank, half a mile above the town, the infatuated young native had promised rows, sails, drives, rides in every direction, and Miss Verey with the mental note, “* Mamma can’t mind such a boy as this,” had accepted some of the proposed excursions conditionally on Mr. Tredennick’s coming in then ‘and there and being introduced to her mother. Then, as the rain continued, as it has a way of doing at Torferry, tea was brought in, and Mr. Tredennick must stay and have some, and the rapid friendship was cemented over the kettle-boiling, and the fire lighting and the toasting ; for a sudden wet day in a lodging demands a fire and hot toast most imperatively. And when poor Harry at last tore himself away, half an hour short of his grandmother’s dinner time, he was as sincerely in love with the London lady as ever any poor boy in this world has been with his first love, three years his senior. “Don’t tease the poor lad, Kate,” said old Mrs. Verey, looking up from her novel when he was gone. ‘He is but a boy, and a very simple one, and it 1s scarcely fair to treat him like a man.” ‘¢ Gracious, mother ! that great big creature can look after himself; but I will treat him quite as a boy, I promise you.” And so she did, with a misleading frankness which was more dangerous to Harry’s peace of mind than more subtle coquetries which might have puzzled and confused him. And from this artless boy-and-girl camaraderie, which Harry found so enchantingly real, and Kate so amusingly fresh, arose the friendly footing of affairs described in Kate’s letter to Mrs. Chamberlain : “the young man has dropped in to call, for the fourth time since Sunday.—He rather bores me about incessant sight-seeing.” COIN @ LOOKS. COM