The Argosy — page 72: what you’re looking at

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

‘““Boy’s Love” and “‘Old Man.” 59 believe me, it will be better for both of us if you will leave what you have to say unsaid. Ah! here are papa and Dr. Seaham” (as two welcome forms loomed through the dim light at the end of the nut-walk) : ‘I must go and see after the coffee.” She passed him quickly, and he was not sorry for the moment’s respite in which to recover himself. For, though in after life Swanny used to tell himself and his wife that he had never really proposed to Rose Grantham, at. that moment, standing forlorn in the Hill garden, he felt very much as if she had refused him! It was not Dr. Seaham who followed Colonel Grantham down the garden path to meet Rose. Dr. Seaham was safely seated in the drawing-room, whither Aunt Charlotte had retired before the advance of those night dews which afforded her much alarm and conversation ; and he was offering that lady some advice for her neuralgia with an assiduity not strictly professional. As Rose came up, her father’s voice broke the silence which seemed to have brooded upon the Hill garden that evening, and to have filled it with strange possibilities. ‘‘T have brought an old friend home with me—Horton, who used to know you when you were a little girl!’ and her hand and Chris Horton’s met once again. After that, for a few moments, she knew nothing of what was going on around her. ‘The girls had come from the tennis-ground, and were laughing and introducing themselves and their companions. Someone noticed Lord Alfred, who stood a little apart. “You are quite destroying that poor little bush,” Violet cried to him; ‘cutting at it with a stick. It is a little delicate bit of ‘ boy’s love,’ which I have taken some pains to make grow, and now you have almost beaten it down!” Then seeing his woe-begone look, she spoke more kindly. ‘Come and make friends with this new man” (a panacea for all troubles in Violet’s opinion). ‘ He knew us when we were so high,” saucily imitating her father’s voice and gesture; ‘‘and never mind the ‘ boy’s love’; it is sure to grow all right again.” But Swanny refused to be comforted, and went sadly away to barracks so early in the evening, that if Colonel Grantham’s attention had not been diverted by his old friend Horton’s coming, he must have noticed it and guessed the reason, as ‘‘White” and “ Blue” did very speedily. | These young ladies very soon made up their minds about Horton, and pronounced upon him to each other. ‘‘ Nice looking, just what a colonel should be, but rather too quiet and fogyish. Rose can talk to him,” and returned to the society and entertainment of Bostock and Thompson, who, during their temporary eclipse, had been savagely knocking about the tennis balls, and inveighing in dark and mysterious language against old friends who knew people when they were ‘so high.” But the return of the twins, having conniclooolkks (C(O)