"
"How can that be, Eve?"
"I don't know; I am sure she did, though. Look at this 'Adieu' and
that; you'll never get it out of my head but what one hand wrote them
both. You are so green, a girl would come behind you and pin it on
you, and you never feel her."
While saying these words, Eve slyly repinned it on him without his
feeling or knowing anything about it.
David was impatient to be gone, but she held him a minute to advise
him.
"Tell her she must and shall. Don't take a denial. If you are
cowardly, she will be bold; but if you are bold and resolute, she will
knuckle down. Mind that; and don't go about it with such a face as
that, as long as my arm. If she says 'No,' you have got the ship to
comfort you. Oh! I am so happy!"
"No, Eve," said David, "if she won't give me herself, I'll never take
her ship. I'd die a foretopman sooner;" and, with these parting words,
he renewed all his sister's anxiety. She sat down sorrowfully, and the
horrible idea gained on her that there was mania in David's love for
Lucy.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
DAVID had one advantage over others that were now hunting Lucy. Mrs.
Wilson had unwittingly given him pretty plain directions how to find
her farmhouse; and as Eve, in the exercise of her discretion, or
indiscretion, had shown David Lucy's letter, he had only to ride to
Harrowden and inquire. But, on the other hand, his competitors were a
few miles nearer the game, and had a day's start.
David got a horse and galloped to Harrowden, fed him at the inn, and
asked where Mrs.
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