John Stevens' Courtship. Gates Susa Young
the tent where the elder ones still sat chatting and enjoying themselves.
Diantha Winthrop was pre-eminently sensible. She was sometimes annoyed with the frequent compliments she received as to this trait of her character. She was rarely angry with people; she never gossiped about anybody, and if she had nothing good to say, she rarely said anything at all. She was not impulsive, nor was she unduly swayed by her emotions, deep as they sometimes were. She acted upon mature thought, and only the few who were her intimate friends, really knew the value of her sterling character.
Henry begged his companion to stroll up the hill-side a little, just fairly out of range of the jokers by the camp-fire, and the girl was the more willing because of that other couple under the pines across the tiny valley.
"Here you are, Dian," cried out Rachel. "I was just wondering if you would not like to get that pop-corn and pop some for the crowd."
But Henry was still begging under his breath, for her to come up in the shadow of the pines, and away from the crowd.
"Can't Lucy and Josephine pop the corn, Rachel?" asked Dian, at last.
Both children protested their utter weariness.
"Ah, child," said young Boyle, patronizingly to little Lucy, "just pop the corn, like the leddy you are."
"I'm not a 'leddy'," flashed the child back, "and I don't think it's fair, so there."
"Don't cry," still teased the young fellow; "do be a good girl," then joking in his rather clumsy fashion, he added, "Come and kiss yoo papa."
"Never mind, youngsters," sang out Tom Allen, "I'll help you," while Harvey and Josephine both flew to assist Lucy Winthrop.
Lucy sprang into the tent in an angry flame, while her mother followed, herself too annoyed at the liberty the young man had taken to answer at all. But she soothed the two little girls, and they all came out and finished the corn. Rachel herself carried some up to Henry and Dian, who now sat cozily far up on the hill-side, under the dense shadow of the trees.
The younger ones slipped away from the fire, and the laughter and song there died down; but the young couple still sat under the dark shadow, far up on the hill-side.
Henry was entertaining Dian with long tales about his former home in the British Isles. He gave glowing pictures of the castle belonging to a distant relative in Staffordshire. The girl listened with increasing interest; for who could fail to sympathize with the neglected cousin, even if a third one, of a real lord and earl. The narrator's allusions to himself were a little broad and fulsome, but Dian was inexperienced, if shrewd by nature. A feeling of deeper respect for this good looking and highly connected youth was growing momentarily in her breast – he certainly was such a fine dancer, and he always picked up a handkerchief so gracefully! She could but feel flattered by these confidential revelations of superior virtues and titled relations. The sounds were hushed from tree to tree, and the canopy of silence was unfolding in all the majesty of the mid-night hour.
Suddenly there was a pounding crash and roar above them on the hill-crest, and down through the brush and trees came bounding some terrible wild animal.
Dian screamed, and Henry jumped wildly in the air, yelling at the top of his voice.
"Run, run; it's a bear."
He took his own advice so quickly that the girl was barely on her feet before he was half-way down to the camp fire, still yelling, "Run, Run!"
As the young man reached the full blaze of the fire, a quick chorus of childish voices, above them on the hill-side from which he had fled, high falsettos, trebels, and one deep bass voice, united in a blasting sing-song:
"Come and kiss yoo papa; come and kiss yoo papa."
And the children, in one derisive row of merciless tormentors, stood just in the upper shadow line, repeating the refrain with painful insistence, until Boyle himself was glad to retreat into the silence of his own tent for the night. There were sounds of laughter from every near-by tent. What Dian thought of this absurd adventure could only be conjectured from the scornful expression of her rosy lips, as she gathered the two little girls in her arms and drove the still jeering boy, Harvey, and Tom Allen in the darkened back-ground, away into the far seclusion of their own tent.
But even as she fled, she heard in the near distance another shrill cat-call, "Come and kiss yoo papa." And she joined with one smothered hysterical burst of laughter, the two girls, who were still in her arms, in laughing at their discomfited enemy.
III
"COME AND KISS YOO PAPA"
It was barely five o'clock the next morning, and long before the lazy sun would climb the high eastern hill, when Brother Duzett's drums rattled and rolled their startling reveille, echoing from peak to peak. In a moment, the quick bustle of camp life broke the stillness of dawn, and the neigh of the tethered horses, and the low of the oxen in the meadow, added a note of surprised domesticity to that wild scene. Then, before these sounds were fairly through echoing and re-echoing across the silver sheeted lake, two rounds from Uncle Dimick Huntington's cannon ware answered by two others across the vale fired from Elisha Everett's fieldpiece. The booming volleys were swept from crag to crag, and went rolling and tumbling in wild confusion down the canyon's winding glens, and were just losing themselves in silence, when the three brass bands united in one great glowing tribute to liberty, in the entrancing melody of the loved "Yankee Doodle." After this even the children could sleep no longer, but dressed as best they could with half-frozen fingers in the dim dawn of the snow-cooled air.
Out from tent and wagon-box they poured at eight o'clock, these merry, happy revellers, filled to the brim with joyous anticipations of all that the day and the years would bring to them.
As Dian and Ellen met each other, both with cheeks of rosy hue from their hastened toilet, and ready to go to the bowery for morning prayers, they heard that shrill call, now muffled by the busy morning noises —
"Come and kiss yoo papa," and Dian knew that the young avengers were again hot on the Englishman's trail.
"What's that?" asked Ellen.
Dian explained her midnight adventure, but she asked no question of Ellen as to her own whereabouts the night before, as she really was indifferent on that subject. She had known and loved Ellen a good part of her life, and she did not propose to let a silly thing like John Steven's diverted attentions come between her and her friend. Dian was much too sensible for jealousy as a pastime; it might do in real love; but jealousy in the abstract had never been a part of her character. Dian was surely sensible.
The girls were that moment joined by Charlie Rose, fresh, dapper, and full of morning "poesy."
"The stars have left the morning skies
To beam in Ellen's lovely eyes,"
he began, when Dian interrupted saucily, "Well, I'll declare!" then he finished —
The rose has left the dawn so meek,
To bloom in Dian's beauteous cheek."
"Well, Charlie, you are at least impartial with your ridiculous compliments," laughed Dian, "but I wish you wouldn't go on about my blowzy cheek."
"I said beauteous," corrected Charlie.
"Where's Tom Allen?" asked Ellen.
"Oh, he's fishing, as usual. Did you folks have plenty of fish this morning?" and then Charlie told absurd Munchhausen fish stories till the girls were convulsed with girlish laughter.
"What became of Boyle, the elegant?" asked Charlie. "Me thinks I see not his fringed pantaloons, nor his gay, red shirt. Hast seen his ludship this bright morning?"
There was a wicked echo in the back regions of the Winthrop tent as Charlie asked this, and a chorus of childish voices piped up, "Come and kiss yoo papa," and Dian and Ellen were again too overcome with successive peals of cruel, heartless merriment even to reply to Charlie.
"Dian," called Rachel, from the tent door, "come here a moment. I want you to find that flat-iron you laid away somewhere."
"Why,