Nor I.
We were both silent for a few minutes.
* * * * *
——Did you ever see the young girl’s drawing-books,——I said, presently.
All but one,——he answered;——she keeps a lock on that, and won’t show it.
Ma’am Allen (the young rogue sticks to that name, in speaking of the
gentleman with the _diamond_), Ma’am Allen tried to peek into it one day
when she left it on the sideboard. “If you please,” says she,——’n’ took
it from him, ’n’ gave him a look that made him curl up like a caterpillar
on a hot shovel. I only wished he hadn’t, and had jest given her a little
saas, for I’ve been takin’ boxin’-lessons, ’n’ I’ve got a new way of
counterin’ I want to try on to somebody.
——The end of all this was, that I came away from the young fellow’s room,
feeling that there were two principal things that I had to live for, for
the next six weeks or six months, if it should take so long. These were,
to get a sight of the young girl’s drawing-book, which I suspected had
her heart shut up in it, and to get a look into the Little Gentleman’s
room.
I don’t doubt you think it rather absurd that I should trouble myself
about these matters. You tell me, with some show of reason, that all I
shall find in the young girl’s book will be some outlines of angels with
immense eyes, traceries of flowers, rural sketches, and caricatures,
among which I shall probably have the pleasure of seeing my own features
figuring. Very likely. But I’ll tell you what _I_ think I shall find. If
this child has idealized the strange little bit of humanity over which
she seems to have spread her wings like a brooding dove,——if, in one of
those wild vagaries that passionate natures are so liable to, she has
fairly sprung upon him with her clasping nature, as the sea-flowers fold
about the first stray shell-fish that brushes their outspread tentacles,
depend upon it, I shall find the marks of it in this drawing-book of
hers,——if I can ever get a look at it,——fairly, of course, for I would
not play tricks to satisfy my curiosity.
Then, if I can get into this Little Gentleman’s room under any fair
pretext, I shall, no doubt, satisfy myself in five minutes that he is
just like other people, and that there is no particular mystery about
him.