He said he was always fond of music. I
used sometimes to wonder if the pretty singer of love-songs had any
special designs upon him. For I had been curiously watching this
innocent little country-girl.
In talking with a friend of mine, he had laid it down as a law of
Nature, that all women, wild or cultivated, delight to worry and torment
all men; that they play with and prey upon their hearts; and that this
is done instinctively, as a cat worries a mouse.
"A ministering angel thou," quoted I, rather abstractedly, as if
comparing views.
"Angels? Yes,--and so they are," he answered, rather smartly. "And every
man's heart is a pool, into which they must descend and trouble the
waters!"
I knew my friend had reason for his bitterness. Still, I resolved to
watch Mary Ellen.
David's bashful attentions were by no means displeasing to her: that I
saw. She had not been accustomed to your glib, off-handed, smartly
dressed youths. Here was a good-looking young man, of blameless life,
who helped her draw up the bucket, took her to sail, taught her to row,
brought her home bushes of huckleberries and branches of swamp-pinks
from the pasture, and shells from the beach.
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