"And you think that I shall never try to make good anything, Mary. It

is not generous to believe the worst of a man. When you have got any

power over him, I think you might try and use it to make him better;

but that is what you never do. However, I'm going," Fred ended,

languidly. "I shall never speak to you about anything again. I'm very

sorry for all the trouble I've caused--that's all."

Mary had dropped her work out of her hand and looked up. There is

often something maternal even in a girlish love, and Mary's hard

experience had wrought her nature to an impressibility very different

from that hard slight thing which we call girlishness. At Fred's last

words she felt an instantaneous pang, something like what a mother

feels at the imagined sobs or cries of her naughty truant child, which

may lose itself and get harm. And when, looking up, her eyes met his

dull despairing glance, her pity for him surmounted her anger and all

her other anxieties.

"Oh, Fred, how ill you look! Sit down a moment. Don't go yet. Let me

tell uncle that you are here. He has been wondering that he has not

seen you for a whole week." Mary spoke hurriedly, saying the words

that came first without knowing very well what they were, but saying

them in a half-soothing half-beseeching tone, and rising as if to go

away to Mr. Featherstone. Of course Fred felt as if the clouds had

parted and a gleam had come: he moved and stood in her way.

"Say one word, Mary, and I will do anything. Say you will not think

the worst of me--will not give me up altogether."

"As if it were any pleasure to me to think ill of you," said Mary, in a

mournful tone. "As if it were not very painful to me to see you an

idle frivolous creature. How can you bear to be so contemptible, when

others are working and striving, and there are so many things to be

done--how can you bear to be fit for nothing in the world that is

useful? And with so much good in your disposition, Fred,--you might

be worth a great deal."

"I will try to be anything you like, Mary, if you will say that you

love me."

"I should be ashamed to say that I loved a man who must always be

hanging on others, and reckoning on what they would do for him. What

will you be when you are forty? Like Mr. Bowyer, I suppose--just as

idle, living in Mrs. Beck's front parlor--fat and shabby, hoping

somebody will invite you to dinner--spending your morning in learning a

comic song--oh no! learning a tune on the flute."




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