"Alice May, and Bruising Bill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ingraham Joseph Holt)

`God bless you, young ladies,' went on his way.
While the window was still up, and they were looking after his feeble stepsЧfor
we all feel an interest in the objects of our charityЧa young gentleman, well
mounted upon a dark bay horse came dashing along. He was handsome, of a manly
figure, and dressed and rode well.
`Do shut the window down, girls,' said one of the young ladies, laughing and
retreating; `he will certainly think we have opened it on purpose to look at
him; and I don't choose to let any young gentleman have such vain thoughts of
himselfЧfor they are vain enough now. See he is looking this way.'
The young horseman seeing a bevy of pretty girls at an open window, could not
well help looking at them very earnestly. Suddenly he half reined up, his
features became animated with a look of surprise and happy recognition, and
bowing with the deepest reverence while his face crimsoned with embarrassment
and joy, he continued on his way towards the avenue, at the same pace at which
he had been before going.
`He bowed to some one of us! who knows him?' said they all.
`Not a soul I believeЧhe thought we were foolishly admiring him, and so
impudently acknowledged it,' said another.
`No, he looked as if he recognized one of us. Let us see who looks conscious, as
no one will speak,' said Auna Linton; `look at Alice May's face. See her blushes
and confusion. She is the one.'
Instantly every eye was fixed upon a young dark-eyed brunette not more than
seventeen years of age, whose delicately olive shaded complexion was incardined
with the richest blood. Her long-fringed eye-lids were cast to the floor, and
she stood silent, beautiful, consciousЧ her pretty fingers picking in pieces a
rose bud. Never was a maiden of seventeen lovelier than she who now stood
confessed before them, the shrine of the handsome horseman's adoring reverence.Ч
The raven hair which the womanly comb had never descrated, flowed darkly
beautiful in glossy waves about her finely shaped head and throat. Her form was
singularly graceful, every motion yielding to the eye a new shape of beauty. The
exquisite finish of her arm and hand would have made Canova an idolater. her
features were faultless. Her low, gentle brow, with its dark, arching eyebrows,
`like two delicate feathers plucked from the black breast of the singing
ummill,' was a throne of serenity and beauty. Never were such eyes as beamed
beneath; large, languid, gentle, and, but for the purity of the soul within,
voluptuous. Passion was there, but in the shape of love yet vestal and
unawakened. The young and happy heart with all its guileless emotions unveiled
and open, was ever drawing in them, to gladden the hearts of all around her.
None beheld her but they loved her. She was the idol of the school, and the
friend of all.
All conscious the lovely girl stood before them, and her downcast eyes and
attitude told a tale each was dying to get at the mystery of.
`Oh, where did you see him?'
`Where did you know him, Alice?'
`Is he from the southЧan old lover?'
`Don't stand there blushing and making yourself look so wickedly lovely. Do tell
us,' were the questions with which she was over-whelmed.
Alice, however, laughed and blushed only the deeper, and breaking away from them
fled to her room.
CHAPTER II.