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Page 31
He looked very much confused.
"I have made some stupid blunder," he stammered. "I owe you a thousand
apologies, but I was singing, and I suppose I passed the landing without
noticing it. I will not keep you long, though. I can row back in ten
minutes."
"I oughtn't to have asked you to sing when you were rowing," she said
remorsefully. "I'm so sorry you should have all that extra work."
"Oh, I don't mind that," he said, trying to speak coolly, "if the delay
won't incommode you."
"No," she said. "We shall be back before dark, and that will be time
enough. I _shouldn't_ like to have to walk home after dark."
Eager words rose to the ferryman's lips, but he wisely suppressed them,
bending to his oars till the little boat sprang through the water.
The sun dropped into the river, allowing the faintly-traced sickle of
the new moon to show, as the boat once more touched land,--at the right
place this time.
Rosamond tripped up the bank, with a friendly "Good-evening," and at the
top she met the professor. "Oh, how nice of you to come and meet me!"
she cried, slipping her hand through his arm. "It grows dark so quickly
after the sun goes down that I was beginning to be just a little
scared."
"I would have been here an hour ago," he said, "but the president kept
me. I called at Miss Eldridge's, thinking to find you returned, and
then, when she said you were still absent, I hurried down here, feeling
unaccountably disquieted. It was absurd, of course. But were you not
detained longer than you anticipated?"
"No, it wasn't absurd," she said, clasping her other hand over his arm
and giving it a little squeeze. The spring dusk had fallen around them
like a veil by this time, and they were still a little way from any
much-travelled street.
"It wasn't absurd _at all_," she repeated "there's nobody but you to
care whether I come in or go out, and I like you to be worried,--just a
little, I mean,--not enough to make you, really wretched. I've had the
funniest time! The old man wasn't there, and I was turning back, quite
disappointed, when a young man,--quite young, and very nice
looking,--who was singing in a foolish sort of way in a pretty little
boat tied to a stake, said he was there in the old boatman's place, and
asked me to go with him; and I went. At first I was puzzled, for he
looked like a gentleman in most respects, and I didn't think he could be
the son of the old man you told me about; but the longer I was with him
the more I saw that there was something queer about him. He was very
kind and polite, but had a sort of abrupt, startled manner, as if he
were afraid of something, and I came to the conclusion that he must be a
harmless insane person, and that they let him have the ferry because
there isn't anything else much that he could do. He had a most lovely
little boat, all cushioned at one end, and he rowed beautifully."
"But it was not safe," said the professor, in alarm. "If a man be ever
so slightly insane, there is no telling what form his insanity will
take: he might have imagined you to be inimical to him, and have thrown
you overboard." And Rosamond felt a nervous tremor through the arm upon
which she leaned. She laughed heartily.
"You'd not feel that way if you could see him, dear," she said. "He's
as gentle as a lamb, and a little sheepish into the bargain. And I
promised to let him row me over to-morrow afternoon at half-past four.
Indeed, there's no danger. The only really queer thing he did was to
carry me a mile down the river; and that was my fault, for I asked him
to sing again. He has a delightful voice, and he sang that song you like
so much,--'Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast!'--and while he was singing
he missed the landing. But he apologized, and rowed me back like
lightning: so it really didn't matter,--especially as you met me, like
the dear that you are."
If a member of the professor's class had used the figures of speech too
frequently employed by Rosamond, he would have received a dignified
rebuke for "hyperbolical and inelegant language;" but it never occurred
to the deluded man that anything but pearls of thought and diamonds of
speech could fall from those rosy lips.
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