Mary Marston | Page 3

upon me. I shall be of age in a few months, and then my mother may-- think as she pleases. I know, of course, with her notions, she would never consent to my making love to Letty--"
"I should think not!" exclaimed Mary. "Who ever thought of such an absurdity? Not you, surely, Mr. Helmer? What would your mother say to hear you? I mention her in earnest now."
"Let mothers mind their own business!" retorted the youth angrily. "I shall mind mine. My mother ought to know that by this time."
Mary said no more. She knew Mrs. Helmer was not a mother to deserve her boy's confidence, any more than to gain it; for she treated him as if she had made him, and was not satisfied with her work.
"When are you going to see Letty, Miss Marston?" resumed Helmer, after a brief pause of angry feeling.
"Next Sunday evening probably."
"Take me with you."
"Take you with me! What are you dreaming of, Mr. Helmer?"
"I would give my bay mare for a good talk with Letty Lovel," he returned.
Mary made no reply.
"You won't?" he said petulantly, after a vain pause of expectation.
"Won't what?" rejoined Miss Marston, as if she could not believe him in earnest.
"Take me with you on Sunday?"
"No," she answered quietly, but with sober decision.
"Where would be the harm?" pleaded the youth, in a tone mingled of expostulation, entreaty, and mortification.
"One is not bound to do everything there would be no harm in doing," answered Miss Marston. "Besides, Mr. Helmer, I don't choose to go out walking with you of a Sunday evening."
"Why not?"
"For one thing, your mother would not like it. You know she would not."
"Never mind my mother. She's nothing to you. She can't bite you. --Ask the dentist. Come, come! that's all nonsense. I shall be at the stile beyond the turnpike-gate all the afternoon--waiting till you come."
"The moment I see you--anywhere upon the road--that moment I shall turn back.--Do you think," she added with half-amused indignation, "I would put up with having all the gossips of Testbridge talk of my going out on a Sunday evening with a boy like you?"
Tom Helmer's face flushed. He caught up the gloves, threw the price of them on the counter, and walked from the shop, without even a good night.
"Hullo!" cried George Turnbull, vaulting over the counter, and taking the place Helmer had just left opposite Mary; "what did you say to the fellow to send him off like that? If you do hate the business, you needn't scare the customers, Mary."
"I don't hate the business, you know quite well, George. And if I did scare a customer," she added, laughing, as she dropped the money in the till, "it was not before he had done buying."
"That may be; but we must look to to-morrow as well as to-day. When is Mr. Helmer likely to come near us again, after such a wipe as you must have given him to make him go off like that?"
"Just to-morrow, George, I fancy," answered Mary. "He won't be able to bear the thought of having left a bad impression on me, and so he'll come again to remove it. After all, there's something about him I can't help liking. I said nothing that ought to have put him out of temper like that, though; I only called him a boy."
"Let me tell you, Mary, you could not have called him a worse name."
"Why, what else is he?"
"A more offensive word a man could not hear from the lips of a woman," said George loftily.
"A man, I dare say! But Mr. Helmer can't be nineteen yet."
"How can you say so, when he told you himself he would be of age in a few months? The fellow is older than I am. You'll be calling me a boy next."
"What else are you? You at least are not one-and-twenty."
"And how old do you call yourself, pray, miss?"
"Three-and-twenty last birthday."
"A mighty difference indeed!"
"Not much--only all the difference, it seems, between sense and absurdity, George."
"That may be all very true of a fine gentleman, like Helmer, that does nothing from morning to night but run away from his mother; but you don't think it applies to me, Mary, I hope!"
"That's as you behave yourself, George. If you do not make it apply, it won't apply of itself. But if young women had not more sense than most of the young men I see in the shop--on both sides of the counter, George--things would soon be at a fine pass. Nothing better in your head than in a peacock's!--only that a peacock has the fine feathers he's so proud of."
"If it were Mr. Wardour now, Mary, that was spreading his tail for you to see, you would not complain of that peacock!"
A vivid rose blossomed instantly in Mary's cheek.