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Miss Primrose: A Novel
Miss Primrose: A Novel
PART I
A Devonshire Lad
I
LETITIA
All little, white-haired, smiling ladies remind me of Letitia – Letitia Primrose, whom you saw just now in a corner of our garden among the petunias. You thought her odd, no doubt, not knowing her as I or as the children do who find her dough-nuts sweet after school is done, or their English cousins, those little brown-feathered beggars waiting on winter mornings in the snow-drifts at her sill. As for myself, I must own to a certain kinship, as it were, not of blood but of propinquity, a long next-doorhood in our youth, a tenderer, nameless tie in after years, and always a fond partiality which began one day by our old green fence. There, on its Primrose side, it seems, she had parted the grape-vines, looking for fruit, and found instead —
"Why! whose little boy is this?"
Now, it happened to be Bertram, Jonathan Weatherby's little boy – it being a holiday, and two pickets off, and the Concords purple in a witchery of September sheen – though at first he could make no sign to her of his parentage, so surprised he was, and his mouth so crammed.
"Will I die?" he asked, when he had gulped down all but his tongue.
"Die!" she replied, laughing at his grave, round eyes and pinching his nearer cheek. "Do I look like an ogress?"
"No," he said; "but I've gone and swallowed 'em."
"The grapes?"
"No – yes – but I mean the pits," whereat she laughed so that his brow darkened.
"Well, a man did once."
"Did what?"