Do you suppose my happiness is
dependent on a fine house and powdered footmen? I should like to go to
the Red River with you, and wear cotton gowns, and tuck up my sleeves
and clean our cottage.'
'Very pretty sport, dear, for a summer day; but my Mary shall have a
sweeter life, and shall occasionally walk in silk attire.'
That tea-drinking by the fireside in the inn parlour was the most
delicious thing within John Hammond's experience. Mary was a bewitching
compound of earnestness and simplicity, so humble, so confiding, so
perplexed and astounded at her own bliss.
'Confess, now, in the summer, when you were in love with Lesbia, you
thought me a horrid kind of girl,' she said, presently, when they were
standing side by side at the window, waiting for the coach.
'Never, Mary. My crime is to have thought very little about you in those
days. I was so dazzled by Lesbia's beauty, so charmed by her
accomplishments and girlish graces, that I forgot to take notice of
anything else in the world. If I thought of you at all it was as
another Maulevrier--a younger Maulevrier in petticoats, very gay, and
good-humoured, and nice.
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