Jack gave up the packing, and sat down, shaken with laughter, on the
first convenient chair.
"Pardon me for laughing, Budd, but I can't help it. What do you want of
a wedding ring? Is it for that 'first wife' of yours you toasted
yesterday at dinner?"
Budd nodded again. "I don't see anything to laugh at," he said, with a
reproachful glance. "You would n't if you was me."
"No, I don't think I should; you 're right there, Budd," he replied,
sobering suddenly after his outburst of laughter. "When is the wedding
to be?"
Budd looked thoughtful. "I have n't proposed yet," was his
matter-of-fact answer.
"Well, why don't you?" Jack, sinner that he was, scented some fun at
Budd's expense.
"I 'm going to when I know how," said Budd, humbly.
"Why don't you take lessons?" suggested Jack.
"I have."
"Of whom?"
"Chi."
Jack shouted. "What did Chi say?" he demanded when he had regained his
breath.
"He said if he wanted to marry a girl, he 'd say what he wanted to--tell
'em he was fond of 'em."
"'Fond of them'--hm," repeated Jack, thoughtfully.
"What do _you_ say?" questioned Budd, turning the tables rather suddenly
on Jack.
"I don't say--never said," replied Jack, shortly.
"That's what Chi said. He said if I begun early I 'd find out how."
"You seem to be on the right road for it."
"Would you say 'fond of her'?" persisted Budd.
"Yes, I think I should," Jack replied with a peculiar smile; "but, of
course, it would depend on the girl."
"Why, that's just what Chi said!"
"He did, did he!" Jack laughed; "Chi knows a thing or two."
"But I thought you 'd know more." Budd's face began to wear a puzzled
look.
Just then Jack heard Rose's voice in the long-room asking where Mr.
Sherrill was, and the sound brought home to him a realizing sense of the
fact that there was but an hour before they left for the station, and
every moment too precious to be wasted on Budd. Rising, and proceeding
with his packing, he said with perfect seriousness:--
"Well, Budd, all I can say is, that if I were going to ask a girl to
marry me, I should ask her if she thought enough of me to take me with
all my imperfections and--"
"Where are you, Jack?" called Hazel, at the foot of the stairs; "Chi has
to go an hour earlier than he said, and the sleigh is at the door."
In the hurry of Jack's good-byes and departure, the sentence was never
finished, and the ring forgotten by him. But Budd remembered.
He was a sturdy little chap, broad of shoulder, strong of limb. His
sandy red hair bristled straight up from his full forehead. His pale
blue eyes, with thick reddish-brown lashes, were round and serious. His
nose was a freckled pug, and his small mouth puckered, when he was very
much in earnest, to the size of a buttonhole. From the time he had
championed Hazel's coming to them, nearly a year ago, he had never
wavered in his allegiance to her, and in his small-boy way showed her
his entire devotion. Hazel had been so grateful to him for his
whole-souled welcome of her, that she took pains to make his boy's heart
happy in every way she could.
For Hazel, Budd was never in the way; never asked too many questions for
her patience; never teased her beyond endurance. He found in her a
ready listener, a good sympathizer, a capital playmate, and a loving
girl-friend, who reproved him sometimes and, at others, praised him.
What wonder that his ten-year-old heart had warmed towards her with its
first boy-love? and that in his manly, practical way, he made of her an
ideal?
"I love Hazel, and when I am big enough, I shall marry her," was what he
said to himself whenever he stopped his play long enough to think about
it at all. Naturally it seemed the wisest thing to tell her this when
he should find the opportunity, and at the same time recall the fact.
Fortified by the testimony of Chi and Jack, he bided his time.
One Saturday afternoon in January, Rose said suddenly to Hazel: "I wish
I could do some of the things that you do, Hazel." Hazel looked up from
her book in surprise.
"What can I do that you can't do, Rose?"
"You dance so beautifully, and I 've always wanted to know how. I feel
so awkward when I see you dance the Highland Fling."
"Is that all?" Hazel laughed a happy laugh. "I can teach you to dance
as easy as anything, if you 'll let me."
"Let you!" Rose exclaimed, flushing with pleasure; "just you try me and
see. But where can we practise?"
"Oh, out in the barn," cried Hazel. "It'll be lots of fun; of course,
it's awfully cold, but the skipping about will keep us warm. I 'll tell
you what--I 'll play on the violin, and you and March and Budd and
Cherry can learn square dances first."
"What fun!" said Rose.
"What's the joke?" asked March, coming in at that moment with Budd and
Cherry.
"We 're going to have a dance in the barn; Hazel's going to teach us.
She says she can do it easy enough."
"Oh, bully!" Budd threw up his tam-o'-shanter, and Cherry, attempting
to charge up and down the long-room as she had seen Hazel at the Fords',
tripped on the rug and fell her length. When March had picked her up
she rubbed her nose, which was growing decidedly pink, and sniffed a
little, then asked suddenly:--
"Who 's going to be my partner? They always have partners in the story
books."
"Sure enough," Rose laughed. "Whatever will we do, Hazel?"
"I never thought of that," said Hazel, ruefully. "Of course, it takes
eight."
"Why can't we have chairs for partners?" said Cherry. "We can bow to
them just as if they were alive, and make them move round, can't we?"
They all laughed at Cherry's inspiration.
"You 're a brick, Cherry Bounce?" said March, approvingly. "All choose
your partners!" And, thereupon, he seized one of the kitchen chairs,
and the rest followed his example. Hazel took her violin, and hooded
and mittened and coated and mufflered, they trooped out to the barn,
each lugging a wooden chair.
"Now I 'll give you the first four changes," said Hazel, illustrating,
as well as she could in trying to be two couples at once, the first
movements. "Form your square and get ready."
They obeyed with alacrity, and Hazel drew her bow across the strings.
"All curtsy to your partners!" she shouted, and the chair-partners
received a bow, and, in turn, were made to thump the floor by being laid
over on their backs, and righted suddenly.
"First couple forward and back!" shouted Hazel, and away went Rose
dragging her chair after her to meet March and his
chair--thumpity-thump--thumpity-thump.
They were in dead earnest, and the chairs were made to behave in a most
human way.
All went well until they came to the Grand Right and Left; then there
arose such a medley of shrieks of laughter, wild wails from the violin,
thumps from sixteen chair-legs, and stampings from eight human ones as
was never heard before. In a few minutes all was inextricable
confusion, and the noise might have been best compared to a Medicine
Dance among the Sioux Indians.
Upon this scene Mr. Blossom and Chi, on their return from the wood,
looked with amazement.
"They seem to be havin' a regular pow-wow," Chi remarked dryly, as the
exhausted dancers and musician sat down, panting for breath, on their
wooden partners. "Rose-pose is about as young as any of 'em--but it
beats all, how she's shootin' up into womanhood."
"She 's no longer my little Rosebud Blossom," said her father, rather
sadly. "I dread the time when the birds begin to fly from the nest, and
I see it coming with March and Rose."
Just then Rose caught sight of her father, and ran to him linking her
arm in his. "We 've had such fun, father! We 're learning to dance; you
must be my partner sometime, for Hazel's going to teach us the
schottische next."
Rose never forgot the look of love her father gave her, nor the feel of
his hand as he laid it on her hooded head: "Be my little Rose-pose, as
long as you can, dear; you 're growing up too fast."
She recalled afterwards that this first dance in the barn marked the
last time that she abandoned herself to the children's fun with a girl's
careless heart.
The winter twilight was fast closing about the Mountain and the children
just returning to the house, when Chi went out to milk. Leaving his
lantern, stool, and pails in the first stall, he entered the third one
to tie one of the cows to a shorter stanchion. Before he had finished
he heard Budd's voice, and, looking over the partition, saw him standing
with Hazel in the circle of light about the lantern. In another minute
he began to feel like an eavesdropper.
"What did you want me to come here for, Budd?" said Hazel, dancing on
the barn floor to warm her feet.
"I want to tell you something," said Budd, blowing on his cold fingers.
"Well, hurry up and tell; it's simply freezing here. Is it a secret?"
"Kinder," replied Budd, blowing harder; then, suddenly ceasing the
bellows movement, he drew a step nearer to Hazel, and, putting the tips
of his pudgy fingers together to make a triangle, he puckered his mouth
solemnly and said, looking up at her with earnest eyes:--
"I 'm very fond of you."
Hazel laughed merrily. "Why, of course you are, you funny boy; you 've
always been fond of me, have n't you? I 'm sure I 've always been fond
of you. Is _that_ what you kept me out here in the cold to say?"
"Not all;" Budd nodded seriously. "I 'm very fond of you, an'--an' if
you 'll take me with all my perfections--I think that's the way it
goes--if I have n't got the ring yet, it will be just the same, you
know." He paused, and in the circle of light Chi could see the entire
earnestness of his attitude.
"Goodness me, Budd! What do you mean about rings and things?"
"I want to marry you when I 'm big--an' I thought I 'd speak 'fore
anyone else did to get ahead of 'em." Budd hastened to explain, as
Hazel showed signs of impatience.
"Oh, is that all!" Hazel breathed a sigh of relief. "I thought
something was the matter with you. Why, of course you 're fond of me,
Budd; but I could n't marry you, for I 'm older than you, you know."
"I never thought of that," said Budd, beginning to blink rather
suspiciously, "I thought--"
"Now, look here, Budd," said Hazel, in a business-like way; "I think
everything of you, too, and I 'll tell you what you can be--"
"What?" interrupted Budd, eagerly, balancing himself on the tips of his
toes.
"My knight!" said Hazel, triumphantly, "and wear my colors. I 'll give
you a bow of crimson ribbon--I 'm Harvard, you know--and you must wear
it till you die. And I have a white kid party glove I 'll give you, too,
and that will mean I 'm your lady-love, and it will be just like the
days of chivalry, you know we were reading about them the other day."
"And you won't mind about the ring?" queried Budd, rather wistfully.
"Not a bit--a glove is much nicer than a ring, and--"
"Moo--oo--oo--" came from the next stall.
"Oh, goodness gracious! How that made me jump. I 'm not going to stay
out here another minute; so come along if you 're coming"--and the
knight meekly followed his lady-love into the house.