Then my thoughts darted off to Bessie. Was she indeed writing to her
old trustee? Judge Hubbard was a friend of my father's, and would
approve of me, I thought, if he did not agree at once to the hurried
marriage and ocean journey.
"What an unconscionable time it takes her! Don't you think so, Mrs.
Sloman?" I said at last, after I had gone through three several papers
on subjects unknown.
I suppose it was scarcely a courteous speech. But Mrs. Sloman smiled a
white-lipped smile of sympathy, and said, "Yes: I will go and send her
to you."
"Oh, don't hurry her," I said falsely, hoping, however, that she
would.
Did I say before that Bessie was tall? Though so slight that you
always wanted to speak of her with some endearing diminutive, she
looked taller than ever that morning; and as she stood before me,
coming up to the fireplace where I was standing, her eyes looked
nearly level into mine. I did not understand their veiled expression,
and before I had time to study it she dropped them and said hastily,
"Young man, I am pining for a walk."
"In the rain?"
"Pshaw! This is nothing, after all, but a Scotch mist. See, I am
dressed for it;" and she threw a tartan cloak over her shoulder--a
blue-and-green tartan that I had never seen before.
"The very thing for shipboard," I whispered as I looked at her
admiringly.
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