Thankful Blossom | Page 6

woman whom he believes loves him. He will perhaps doubt
its influence in the colder judgment of mankind; but he will consider
that this poor creature, at least, understands him, and in some vague
way represents the eternal but unrecognized verities. And when this is
voiced by lips that are young and warm and red, it is somehow quite as
convincing as the bloodless, remoter utterance of posterity.
Wherefore the trooper complacently buttoned the compliment over his
chest with the pullets.
"I think you must go now, Allan," she said, looking at him with that
pseudo-maternal air which the youngest of women sometimes assume
to their lovers, as if the doll had suddenly changed sex, and grown to
man's estate. "You must go now, dear; for it may so chance that father
is considering my absence overmuch. You will come again a'
Wednesday, sweetheart; and you will not go to the assemblies, nor visit
Mistress Judith, nor take any girl pick-a- back again on your black
horse; and you will let me know when you are hungry?"
She turned her brown eyes lovingly, yet with a certain pretty trouble in
the brow, and such a searching, pleading inquiry in her glance, that the
captain kissed her at once. Then came the final embrace, performed by
the captain in a half-perfunctory, quiet manner, with a due regard for
the friable nature of part of his provisions. Satisfying himself of the
integrity of the eggs by feeling for them in his pocket, he waved a
military salute with the other hand to Miss Thankful, and was gone. A
few minutes later the sound of his horse's hoofs rang sharply from the

icy hillside.
But, as he reached the summit, two horsemen wheeled suddenly from
the shadow of the roadside, and bade him halt.
"Capt. Brewster, if this moon does not deceive me?" queried the
foremost stranger with grave civility.
"The same. Major Van Zandt, I calculate?" returned Brewster
querulously.
"Your calculation is quite right. I regret Capt. Brewster, that it is my
duty to inform you that you are under arrest."
"By whose orders?"
"The commander-in-chief's."
"For what?"
"Mutinous conduct, and disrespect of your superior officers."
The sword that Capt. Brewster had drawn at the sudden appearance of
the strangers quivered for a moment in his strong hand. Then, sharply
striking it across the pommel of his saddle, he snapped it in twain, and
cast the pieces at the feet of the speaker.
"Go on," he said doggedly.
"Capt. Brewster," said Major Van Zandt, with infinite gravity, "it is not
for me to point out the danger to you of this outspoken emotion, except
practically in its effect upon the rations you have in your pocket. If I
mistake not, they have suffered equally with your steel. Forward,
march!"
Capt. Brewster looked down, and then dropped to the rear, as the
discased yolks of Mistress Thankful's most precious gift slid slowly and
pensively over his horse's flanks to the ground.

II
Mistress Thankful remained at the wall until her lover had disappeared.
Then she turned, a mere lissom shadow in that uncertain light, and
glided under the eaves of the shed, and thence from tree to tree of the
orchard, lingering a moment under each as a trout lingers in the shadow
of the bank in passing a shallow, and so reached the farmhouse and the
kitchen door, where she entered. Thence by a back staircase she slipped
to her own bower, from whose window half an hour before she had
taken the signalling light. This she lit again and placed upon a chest of
drawers; and, taking off her hood and a shapeless sleeveless mantle she
had worn, went to the mirror, and proceeded to re-adjust a high horn
comb that had been somewhat displaced by the captain's arm, and
otherwise after the fashion of her sex to remove all traces of a previous
lover. It may be here observed that a man is very apt to come from the
smallest encounter with his dulcinea distrait, bored, or shame- faced; to
forget that his cravat is awry, or that a long blond hair is adhering to his
button. But as to Mademoiselle--well, looking at Miss Pussy's sleek
paws and spotless face, would you ever know that she had been at the
cream-jug?
Thankful was, I think, satisfied with her appearance. Small doubt but
she had reason for it. And yet her gown was a mere slip of flowered
chintz, gathered at the neck, and falling at an angle of fifteen degrees to
within an inch of a short petticoat of gray flannel. But so surely is the
complete mould of symmetry indicated in the poise or line of any
single member, that looking at the erect carriage of her graceful brown
head, or