The Argosy — page 240: what you’re looking at

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

Seventeen. 223 Rose would protest as much as she dared. But Aunt Maria over-ruled her objections peremptorily. ‘‘‘Not want to marry!’ Nonsense! Every girl wants to marry. ‘Not want to marry W2z//?’ I should be glad to know whom you mean to marry then! ‘ Will does not wish to marry you?’ Stuff and nonsense! What does he come here for ?” No one could answer that last question satisfactorily. Perhaps he came for the fishing and shooting ; perhaps he found it dull at home. But he did not come for the sake of Rose, and Rose knew that. Once I heard them talking together about Aunt Maria’s scheme, and they were laughing gently, without a touch of self-consciousness or embarrassment. And once I heard him deliver a message from his brother, ‘‘ that other boy,” the favourite, but not the elder son. It was a very unimportant message. Aunt Maria herself might have heard it; but Will smiled and Rose blushed as he delivered it, and I understood then how hopeless my aunt’s plans were. It was my seventeenth birthday. I had brought my needlework into the orchard, and was sitting on the grass, where the boughs of the apple-trees made a pleasant shade, and was sewing now and then, by fits and starts, but thinking all the time. By-and-bye the garden door opened and shut, and a slow, sauntering step came down the path. I began to sew steadily then. I did not turn my head. It was ohly when Will stood just before me that I looked up. He threw away his cigar, put his hands into his pockets, and smiled down at me in a half-lazy, half-tender way. I went on sewing again, but those stitches were wrong, and I had, I remember, to pick them out next day. ‘‘T like white gowns, you know,” he said, musingly, after a minute, still looking down at me. “Do you?” said I, with an involuntary glance at my own white gown, with the sunshine flecking it. ‘Why don’t other girls have their things made like that—all soft, you know, without any seams and edges ?” “ Like this ?” said I, looking up with a smile into the approving _ grey eyes bent down upon me. “ There’s no making in it. I made it myself. It’s just a full body and a straight skirt; there’s no trimming at all.” 7 “It’s white,” said Will, a little vaguely. ‘Girls ought to wear white gowns: why don’t they? ” “T don’t know,” said I. ‘ Z wear them because they wash.” Will looked up at the sky between the trees, and whistled softly to himself. Then his glance travelled downwards towards me again. “It is your birthday to-day ?” he said, in a lazy, questioning way. cc Yes,” “Do you lke birthdays ? ” “Qn the whole, I think not,” I said, working more quickly, and making some pitifully irregular stitches to unpick. cComicoooKks (SO) an