THE WEST SHORE.
13
. Perhaps Peggy is pretty enough, only shrewish.
No mutter for cold coffee; you should have been
up before.
What pnd, thin, poorly cooked chops to cat with your
rolls!
She thinks they are very good, and wonders how
you can set such an example to your children.
The butter is nauseating.
"-She has no other, and hopes you'll not raise a
storm about butter a little turned. I think I see myself,
ruminated 1, Bitting meekly at table, scarce daring to lift
up my eyes, utterly fagged out with some quarrel of yes
terday, choking down detestably sour muffins, that my
wife thinks are "delicious," slipping in dried mouthfuls
of burnt ham off the side of my fork tines, slipping off my
chair sideways at the end, and slipping out, with my hat
between my knees, to business, and never feeling myself
a competent, sound-minded man till the oak door is be
tween me and Peggy.
"Ha, ha! not yet," said I; and in so earnest a
tone that my dog started to his feet, cocked his eye to
have a goixl look into my face, met my smile of triumph
with an amiable wag of the tail, and curled up again in
the corner.
Again, Peggy is rich enough, well enough, mild enough,
only she doesn't care a fig for you. She has married you
because father or grandfather thought the match eligible,
and because she didn't wish to disoblige them. Besides,
she didn't jxmitively hate you, and thought you were a
respectable enough young person; she has told you so re
peatedly at dinner. She wonders you like to read iootry;
she wishes you would buy her a Hwod cxk-lxx)k, and in
sists ujHn your making your will at the birth of the first
baby.
She thinks Captain So-and-So a splendid-lxking fel
low, and wishes you would trim up a little, were it only
for appearance's sake.
You need not hurry up from the office so early at
night; she, bless her dear heart! does not feel lonely. You
read to her a love tale; she interrupts the pathetic pnrtB
with directions to her seamstress. You read of marriages;
she sighs, and asks if Captain So-and-So has left town!
She hates to be mewed up in n cottage or lwtween brick
walls; she does love the Springs!
Hut, Bgain, Peggy loves you; at least she swears it,
with her hand on the " Sorrows of Werther." She has
pin-money which she spends for the Library World and
the Fr'wmh in Council. She is not bad-lxking, save a
bit tx much of forehead; nor is she sluttish, unless a
vryliytv till three o'clock and an ink skin on the fore
finger le sluttish; but then she is such a sod bluet
You never fancied, when you saw her buried in a three
volume novel, that it was anything more than a girlish
vagary; nnd when she quoted Latin you thought inno
cently that she had a capital memory for her samplers.
But to be tared eternally Hlxmt divine Dante and
funny Goldoni is too bad Your copy of Tasso, a treasure
print of 1080, is all bethumbod and dogs-eared and Hjxtted
with baby gruel. Even your Seneca an Elzevir it all
sweaty with handling. She adoros La Fontaine, reads
Balzac with a kind of artist scowl, and will not let Greek
idono. You hint at broken rest and an aching head at break
fiU Hud she will liing you a scrap of Anthology, in lieu
of the camphor bottle, or chant the ulai, tlai, of tragic
chorus.
The nurse is getting dinner; you are holding the
baby; Peggy is reading Bruycre.
The fire smoked thick as pitch, and puffed out little
clouds over the chimney pieco. I gave the foro-Htick a
kick, at the thought of Peggy, baby and Bruyero.
Suddenly the llame flickered bluely athwart tlio
smoke, caught at a twig below, rolled round the mossy oak
stick, twined among the crackling tree limbs, mounted, lit
up the whole btxly of sm)ke, and blazed out cheerily and
bright Doubt vanished with Smoke, and Hope began
with Flame.
II-
III.AZE SIGNIFYING C1IKK1U
I pushed my chair back; drew up another; stretched
out my feet cosily uxn it, rested my cllxws on the chair
arms, leaned my head on one hand, and looked straight
into the leaping and dancing flame.
Love is a flame, ruminated I; and (glancing round
the room) how a flame brightens up a Hum's habitation.
"Carlo," said I, calling up my dog into the light;
"g(xxl fellow, Carlo!" and I patted him kindly; and he
wagged his tail and laid his nose across my knee, and
hx)ked wistfully up in my face; then strode away, turned
to look again, and lay down to sleep.
"Pho, the brute!" said I; " it is not enough, after all,
to like a dog."
If now in that chair yonder, not tho one your feet
lie ujxm, but the other, lxwido you -closer yet were
seated a sweet-faced girl, with a pretty little fin it lying out
upon the hearth, a bit of lace running round the swelling
throat, the hair parted to a charm over a forehead fair as
any of your dreams; and if you could reach an arm round
that chair-back, without fear of giving offence, and suffer
your fingers to play idly with those curls that escape down
the neck; and if you could clasp with your other hand
those little, white, tajmr fingers of hers, which lie so
temptingly within reach, and so, talk softly and low in
presence of the blaze, while the hours slip without
knowledge, and the winter winds whistle uncared for; if,
in short, you were no bachelor, but tht husband of some
such sweet image (dream, cidl it rather), would it not bo
far plcasautcr than this cold, single, night sitting, count
ing the sticks, reckoning the length of the blaze, and the
height of the falling snow?
And if, some or all of those wild vagaries that gfow
on your fancy at such an hour, you could whiser into lis
tening Ixicause loving ears ears not tired with listening,
localise it is you who whisper; ears ever indulgent, lo
calise eager to praise; and rf your darkest fancies were
lit up, not merely with bright wood-firo, but with a ringing
laugh of that sweet face turned op in fond rebuke how
far Ix'ttur than to le waxing black and sour over iBtilon.
tial humor alone, your very dog asleep?