"Am I not a little goose?" she murmured.
"You certainly are," replied Freeman.
"You mustn't hold my hand any more."
"Do you mean to withdraw your apology?"
"N--no; but it doesn't follow that----"
"Oh, yes, it does. Besides, when a man receives such a delicate, refined, graceful, exquisite apology as this,"--here he lifted the hand, looked at it critically, and bestowed another kiss upon it,--"he would be a fool not to make the most of it."
"Ah, I'm afraid you're dangerous. You are well named--Freeman!"
"My name is Harvey: won't you call me by it?"
"Oh, I can't!"
"Try! Would it make it easier if I were to call you by yours?"
"Mine is Miss Parsloe."
"Pooh! How can that be your name which you are going to change so soon?
When I look at you, I see your name; when I think of you, I say it to myself,--Grace!"
"How do you know I am going to change my name soon--or ever?"
"Whom are you talking to?"
"To you,--Harvey! Oh!" She snatched her hand away and pressed it over her lips.
"How do I know you are beautiful, Grace, and--irresistible?"
"But I'm not! You're making fun of me! Besides, I'm twenty."
"How many times have you been engaged?"
"Never. Nobody wants to be engaged to a poor girl. Oh me!"
"Do you know what you are made of, Grace? Fire and flowers! Few men in the world are men enough to be a match for you. But what have you been doing with yourself all this time? Why do you come to a place like this?"
"Maybe I had a presentiment that . . .
What nonsense we are talking! But what you said reminds me. It's the strangest coincidence!"
"What is it?"
"Your Professor Meschines----"
"On the contrary, he is a most matter- of-fact old gentleman."
"Do be quiet, and listen to me! When my mamma was a girl in school, there were two boys there,--it was a boy-and-girls' school,--and they were great friends. But they both fell in love with my mamma----"
"I can understand that," put in Freeman.
"How do you know I am like my mamma?
Well, as I was saying, they both fell in love with her, and quarrelled with each other, and had a fight. The boy that won the fight is the man to whose house I am going."
"Then he didn't marry your mamma?"
"Oh, no; that was only a childish affair, and she married another man."
"The one who got thrashed?"
"Of course not. But the one who got thrashed is your Professor Meschines."
"I see! The poor old professor! And he has remained a bachelor all his life."
"Mamma has often told me the story, and that the Trednoke boy went to West Point, and distinguished himself in the Mexican war, and married a Mexican woman, and the Meschines boy became a professor in Yale College. And now I am going to see one of them, and you to see the other. Isn't that a coincidence?"
"The first of a long series, I trust. Is this West-Pointer a permanent settler here?"
"Yes, for ever so long,--twenty years.
He's a widower, but he has a daughter----
Oh, I know you'll fall in love with her!"
"Is she like you?"
"I don't know. I've never seen her, or General Trednoke either."
"Come to think of it, though, nobody is like you, Grace. Now, will you be so good as to apologize again?"
"Don't you think you're rather exacting, Harvey?"
However, the apology was finally repeated, and continued, more or less, during the rest of the voyage; and Grace quite forgot that she had never made Harvey tell what was really the cause of his coming to California.
But she, on her side, had a secret.
She never allowed him to suspect that the past eighteen months of her life had been passed as employee in a New York dry- goods store.
