Her Sailor: A Love Story

The particular weeping willow from which this garland was to be gathered was one of the most pliant and flexible in Rubicon Meadows, and it needed to be so; for many years it had been used as a rocking-horse by the slender, graceful girl swinging on one of its drooping branches.

Up and down she went, seated comfortably on one of the lower limbs. The time was seven o’clock in the morning, the season early July,—the period of greatest greenness, freshness, and delicacy in the New England summer.

The girl was putting in the hour that must elapse before her parents should see fit to descend from their chamber and partake of breakfast; and while she swung, her gaze wandered far out over the meadows toward the distant village twinkling and sparkling in the early morning sun.

It was one of the loveliest spots in New Hampshire, but the river and the meadows and the village were an old story to the swinging girl. At present her thoughts were far from her home and her immediate surroundings; and, closing her eyes, she sang more vivaciously than ever:

“‘He’s a gay and gallant rover,

And I ’spect he’s false to me.’”

“No, he isn’t,” said a voice, so deep and so sudden that she almost lost her balance, and her hazel eyes flew open with unwonted rapidity.

“Ah!” she said, drawing a long breath, and clinging closer to her shaggy green steed.

While she had been singing the man had come down the dusty road to the old-fashioned house on the meadows,—a man of medium size, possessing a strongly built, powerful frame, a dark face burnt almost black from the sun, and a peculiar gravity of manner that proclaimed even more loudly than his swarthy complexion some foreign admixture of blood.

The girl in the tree knew who he was. This was the lover of whom she had been singing. He was the offspring of an adventurous Spanish maiden, of Valencia, who had run away from home to marry a love-stricken British sailor; and the girl was American, or considered herself so, and her lover was considerably older than herself. When he removed his hat her eyes went unerringly to his one defect, the unmistakable bald spot in the centre of his thick crop of black hair.

He delighted in startling her. He had crept softly through the gate and under the tree where she was singing; and gazing demurely down at him as he stood with his head a few inches from her face, she remarked, mischievously, “Mr. Owl, do you see the sun? Why did you not wait for the moon?”

He reached up one hand and seized the trembling branch, then with the other gently attempted to draw the light head from its nest of green leaves. It would not come. What an exquisite, waggish, obstinate and altogether adorable little head it was. Yet it would not lie on his shoulder.