And marriage, and death, and division,
Make barren our lives."

But Bluebell knows nothing of that. She is at the scribbling age, and can
actually endure to describe, as if they were new and entirely original,
the dawning follies of seventeen.

In England a heroine might have wound up such sentimental exercises with
gazing out on the moonlit scene; but nine degrees below zero was
unfavourable for the wooing of Diana. The "cold light of stars" was no
poetical figure, and Bluebell, frozen back to the prosaic, piled up the
stove, and crept into bed, where her waking dreams soon merged into
sleeping ones.




CHAPTER V.

A WOODLAND WALK.

I hope, pretty maid, you won't take it amiss,
If I tell you my reason for asking you this,
I would see you safe home (now the swain was in love),
Of such a companion if you would approve.
Your offer, kind shepherd, is civil, I own,
But I see no great danger in going alone;
Nor yet can I hinder, the road being free
For one as another, for you as for me.