Part 23

We saw Kosciusko's monument, and I would insist upon his telling me things about Kosciusko himself, though Potter didn't seem to think him important; and then we began winding our way along a most exquisite path overhanging the river, always shadowed by trees. Sometimes it was cut through a green arbour, with a light like liquid emeralds; sometimes it ran high on the rocks; sometimes it dipped down close to the water; but invariably there was just enough room for two, and no more, to walk side by side.

We met several couples--cadets and girls; young officers and girls;--sauntering or sitting down close together in out of the way places. But by and by we seemed to have passed beyond the inhabited zone. Then Potter asked me if I were not tired from so much walking, and if I wouldn't like to rest. I said no, and he promptly pretended to be done up, which I thought very silly; but of course I had to sit down by him on a rock with a green, moss-velvet cushion.

"This is what I've been longing for all day," said he.

I hadn't; and I was thinking about the cadets. But I agreed that it was beautiful.

"Yes, it is," he answered, looking at me. "I never saw anything so pretty. Say, Lady Betty, you're an awful flirt."

I did open my eyes at that. "A flirt!" I exclaimed. "I never had a chance to try being it."

"I guess you don't need to try. There's some things girls like you are born knowing. I've been miserable all the afternoon. Couldn't you see my agony?"

"I didn't notice," said I.

"Ah, that's the trouble. You weren't thinking of me. Of course, I oughtn't to have cared for those little boys," (some of them were inches taller than he) "but I couldn't help it. I kept saying inside, 'This is a foretaste of what I've got to suffer when she's staying with Katherine at The Moorings.' I don't know when I've been so unpopular with myself. I don't see how I'm going to get along unless you'll be nice to me; right now."

"I am nice to you," I said. "As nice as I know how to be."

"I could teach you to be a lot nicer. Say, Lady Betty, let me, won't you?"

His eyes, though they are such a pale blue, had that silly, melting look in them that my cousin Loveland's have when he talks to me. "Let you do what?" I asked, almost snappishly, for a person sitting in such a lovely place.

"Teach you to like me. I fell all over myself in love with you the first minute I saw you."

"Day before yesterday!" I exclaimed. "What nonsense. You're poking fun at me. I don't believe in love at first sight--at least, I don't think I do. Anyhow, nobody could fall in love with me in that way."

"Couldn't they, though? That's all you know about it, then. All Americans will fall in love with you like that, and it's just what I want to guard against. I want you to be engaged to me before you go to Newport. Then I shall feel kind of safe."

"Dear me, are you really proposing, and it isn't in joke?" I asked. "I do wish you wouldn't."

"Would I propose to Lady Betty Bulkeley in joke?" he reproached me.

"The idea of proposing to any girl when you've only seen her three times!"

"What did I tell you about my friend in San Francisco? I was working slowly up to this, even then."

"Slowly!"

"Yes, very slowly. I think I've shown a great deal of patience. American girls--the beauties, I mean--are quite hurt if a fellow doesn't propose somewhere along in the first day or two. They think he can't appreciate their real worth, and that he deserves what he gets if some other chap walks away with them. Now, I'm not going to sit still on my perch and see anything else walking off with you."

I couldn't help laughing. "I'll call for help if I think there's any danger," said I; "but I can't promise more than that. I didn't come over to America to pick up a husband."

He looked at me rather queerly when I said that, almost as if he thought I had come for that express purpose, and was trying to conceal it. But, of course, he couldn't be so horrid as to suppose such a thing really, and I must have imagined the strange expression. If he only knew, I came away so that another girl might be sure to get a husband, and I'm not allowed to go back until he has been got.

"They're just growing around on blackberry bushes and in strawberry patches for you to pick and choose," said Potter, "and that's what worries me. I'm a wildly jealous fellow. I've got two month's leave so as to be with you at Newport, and I tell you I shall see a bright, beautiful crimson, if too many dudes come fooling around the shanty. Say, won't you just play we're engaged, anyhow, and see how you like it?"

But now I was really cross, and wouldn't hear a word more of such nonsense, so I jumped up, and he had to scramble up, too.

"If you've really proposed--which I doubt--" said I, "you must please understand that you've been formally refused. But I forgive you because I believe you must have been chaffing, and because it's my first proposal; so at all events I can't die without having had at least one. Now, do be sensible and take me back, or I shall have to find my way alone,--or else ask a strange cadet to pilot me."

That threat found a vulnerable spot; and he was not half bad on the way home--perhaps no worse than the name of the Walk allowed.

I was a good deal excited about the ball, as it was my very first. Sally Woodburn had looked at my things, and told me what to bring. Not that it was a hard choice, for I have only four frocks with me, in which I could go to a dance. The one Sally wanted me to wear at West Point is a little white thing, of embroidered India muslin. Thompson made it after one of Vic's, and it is a rag compared to Sally's and Mrs. Ess Kay's gorgeous things. But when Sally had done my hair in a new way, (they had left Louise behind, as there was no room for her), and fastened round my throat a lovely string of pearls she brought on purpose, I looked quite nice.