Quaint Courtships | Page 3

man should be sent away from home. "To save him," says the father. "To protect my daughter," says Mrs. Morris.
But Alfred and Letty had something to say.... It was in December; there was a snow-storm--a storm which Lydia Wright would certainly have called "awful"; but it did not interfere with true love; these two children met in the graveyard to swear undying constancy. Alfred's lantern came twinkling through the flakes, as he threaded his way across the hillside among the tombstones, and found Letty just inside the entrance, standing with her black serving-woman under a tulip-tree. The negress, chattering with cold and fright, kept plucking at the girl's pelisse; but once Alfred was at her side, Letty was indifferent to storm and ghosts. As for Alfred, he was too cast down to think of them.
"Letty, they will part us."
"No, my dear Alfred, no!"
"Yes. Yes, they will. Oh, if you were only mine!"
Miss Letty sighed.
"Will you be true to me, Letty? I am to go on a sailing-vessel to China, to be gone two years. Will you wait for me?"
Letty gave a little cry; two years! Her black woman twitched her sleeve.
"Miss Let, it's gittin' cole, honey."
"(Don't, Flora.)--Alfred, _two years!_ Oh, Alfred, that is an eternity. Why, I should be--I should be twenty!"
The lantern, set on a tombstone beside them, blinked in a snowy gust. Alfred covered his face with his hands, he was shaken to his soul; the little, gay creature beside him thrilled at a sound from behind those hands.
"Alfred,"--she said, faintly; then she hid her face against his arm; "my dear Alfred, I will, if you desire it--fly with you!"
Alfred, with a gasp, lifted his head and stared at her. His slower mind had seen nothing but separation and despair; but the moment the word was said he was aflame. What! Would she? Could she? Adorable creature!
"Miss Let, my feet done get cole--"
("Flora, be still!)--Yes, Alfred, yes. I am thine."
The boy caught her in his arms. "But I am to be sent away on Monday! My angel, could you--fly, _to-morrow_?"
And Letty, her face still hidden against his shoulder, nodded.
Then, while the shivering Flora stamped, and beat her arms, and the lantern flared and sizzled, Alfred made their plans, which were simple to the point of childishness. "My own!" he said, when it was all arranged; then he held the lantern up and looked into her face, blushing and determined, with snowflakes gleaming on the curls that pushed out from under her big hood. "You will meet me at the minister's?" he said, passionately. "You will not fail me?"
"I will not fail you!" she said; and laughed joyously; but the young man's face was white.
She kept her word; and with the assistance of Flora, romantic again when her feet were warm, all went as they planned. Clothes were packed, savings-banks opened, and a chaise abstracted from the Price stable.
"It is my intention," said the youth, "to return to my father the value of the vehicle and nag, as soon as I can secure a position which will enable me to support my Lefty in comfort and fashion."
On the night of the elopement the two children met at the minister's house. (Yes, the very old Rectory to which we Old Chester children went every Saturday afternoon to Dr. Lavendar's Collect class. But of course there was no Dr. Lavendar there in those days.)
Well; Alfred requested this minister to pronounce them man and wife; but he coughed and poked the fire. "I am of age," Alfred insisted; "I am twenty-two." Then Mr. Smith said he must go and put on his bands and surplice first; and Alfred said, "If you please, sir." And off went Mr. Smith--_and sent a note to Alfred's father and Letty's mother!_
We girls used to wonder what the lovers talked about while they waited for the traitor. Ellen Dale always said they were foolish to wait. "Why didn't they go right off?" said Ellen. "If I were going to elope, I shouldn't bother to get married. But, oh, think of how they felt when in walked those cruel parents!"
The story was that they were torn weeping from each other's arms; that Letty was sent to bed for two days on bread and water; that Alfred was packed off to Philadelphia the very next morning, and sailed in less than a week. They did not see each other again.
But the end of the story was not romantic at all. Letty, although she crept about for a while in deep disgrace, and brooded upon death--that interesting impossibility, so dear to youth,--married, if you please! when she was twenty, and went away to live. When Alfred came back, seven years later, he got married, too. He married a Miss Barkley. He used to go away on long voyages, so perhaps