The Argosy — page 256: what you’re looking at

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

198 A Country Heart. ‘The day is a particular one,” he explained again. ‘You must not forget 1t—next Tuesday, the 22nd of August.” ‘¢ All right. Your birthday, is ite Then I'll be certain to remember it, and your coming of age shall be properly celebrated. I promise you, in spite of your grandmother and your late respected grandfather, and all the lawyers in Lincoln’s Inn. By-the-bye,” she continued, ‘ do you know that Mrs. Briscoe has been lecturing me about making and keeping you idle, and interfering with your reading with the Rector ? She even went so far as to say that there was a marked flirtation! Tell me, Mr. Tredennick, ave you flirting with me? For if so, I shall be obliged to send for some of my friends—Mr. Vernker would do—and get them to shoot you !” She had promised her mother she would treat him quite as a boy ; and the careless words meant nothing to her; nor did they need the emphatic, ‘Good heavens, no!” with which Harry Tredennick re- pudiated the idea, half to himself, and with a blush on his brown cheeks, which almost belied his twenty-one years. “Then you'll recollect Tuesday ; and I will see you again and arrange about meeting, and all that, between this and then; and you'll get your mother to agree to Shepstone, for I want you for the whole _ day.” | So they parted at the Myrtle Bank gate; the boy full of the pleasantest hopes ; the girl, with a heart so joyfully resting on a happy certainty, which had nothing whatever to do with Torferry or Harry Tredennick, that the latter’s cherished plan made as little impression on her mind as Mrs. Briscoe’s rude words or Mr. Verriker’s polite ones. For was not Gerard Anstey coming south, as he had hinted he should do, and as she had hundreds and hundreds of times assured herself he would or would not do, according as she was in a hopeful mood or the reverse. Poor Harry Tredennick! had he known it, he and his birthday party had little to do with the girl’s gay spirits and saucy speeches. * You had better not come to fetch us,” she called after him, “ but give us the rendezvous somewhere remote down the coast, so that our movements may baffle your Tutoress.” And so saying, she turned into the house, and straightway forgot all about the young Squire. Hil. Ir was the bnghtest, most sparkling morning imaginable. The se2 was blue in the distance, but molten gold where the ad/cyon sprang through the sunshine which lay across Torferry Bay. Kate Verey and Gerard Anstey were leaning against the side, watching the clean furrow she left along the smooth water—at least, the girl’s eyes wandered along the track, but the man’s were fixed upon her face. Mrs. Verey, with her pillows and novels, was piled conveniently out of hearing. Captain Anstey was a masterful looking man. He was COMIC OoOOkKS.con