"Pardon me for laughing, Budd, but I can't help it. What do you want of a wedding ring? Is it for that 'first wife' of yours you toasted yesterday at dinner?"
Budd nodded again. "I don't see anything to laugh at," he said, with a reproachful glance. "You would n't if you was me."
"No, I don't think I should; you 're right there, Budd," he replied, sobering suddenly after his outburst of laughter. "When is the wedding to be?"
Budd looked thoughtful. "I have n't proposed yet," was his matter-of-fact answer.
"Well, why don't you?" Jack, sinner that he was, scented some fun at Budd's expense.
"I 'm going to when I know how," said Budd, humbly.
"Why don't you take lessons?" suggested Jack.
"I have."
"Of whom?"
"Chi."
Jack shouted. "What did Chi say?" he demanded when he had regained his breath.
"He said if he wanted to marry a girl, he 'd say what he wanted to--tell 'em he was fond of 'em."
"'Fond of them'--hm," repeated Jack, thoughtfully.
"What do _you_ say?" questioned Budd, turning the tables rather suddenly on Jack.
"I don't say--never said," replied Jack, shortly.
"That's what Chi said. He said if I begun early I 'd find out how."
"You seem to be on the right road for it."
"Would you say 'fond of her'?" persisted Budd.
"Yes, I think I should," Jack replied with a peculiar smile; "but, of course, it would depend on the girl."
"Why, that's just what Chi said!"
"He did, did he!" Jack laughed; "Chi knows a thing or two."
"But I thought you 'd know more." Budd's face began to wear a puzzled look.
Just then Jack heard Rose's voice in the long-room asking where Mr.
Sherrill was, and the sound brought home to him a realizing sense of the fact that there was but an hour before they left for the station, and every moment too precious to be wasted on Budd. Rising, and proceeding with his packing, he said with perfect seriousness:--
"Well, Budd, all I can say is, that if I were going to ask a girl to marry me, I should ask her if she thought enough of me to take me with all my imperfections and--"
"Where are you, Jack?" called Hazel, at the foot of the stairs; "Chi has to go an hour earlier than he said, and the sleigh is at the door."
In the hurry of Jack's good-byes and departure, the sentence was never finished, and the ring forgotten by him. But Budd remembered.
He was a sturdy little chap, broad of shoulder, strong of limb. His sandy red hair bristled straight up from his full forehead. His pale blue eyes, with thick reddish-brown lashes, were round and serious. His nose was a freckled pug, and his small mouth puckered, when he was very much in earnest, to the size of a buttonhole. From the time he had championed Hazel's coming to them, nearly a year ago, he had never wavered in his allegiance to her, and in his small-boy way showed her his entire devotion. Hazel had been so grateful to him for his whole-souled welcome of her, that she took pains to make his boy's heart happy in every way she could.
For Hazel, Budd was never in the way; never asked too many questions for her patience; never teased her beyond endurance. He found in her a ready listener, a good sympathizer, a capital playmate, and a loving girl-friend, who reproved him sometimes and, at others, praised him.
What wonder that his ten-year-old heart had warmed towards her with its first boy-love? and that in his manly, practical way, he made of her an ideal?
"I love Hazel, and when I am big enough, I shall marry her," was what he said to himself whenever he stopped his play long enough to think about it at all. Naturally it seemed the wisest thing to tell her this when he should find the opportunity, and at the same time recall the fact.
Fortified by the testimony of Chi and Jack, he bided his time.
One Saturday afternoon in January, Rose said suddenly to Hazel: "I wish I could do some of the things that you do, Hazel." Hazel looked up from her book in surprise.
"What can I do that you can't do, Rose?"
"You dance so beautifully, and I 've always wanted to know how. I feel so awkward when I see you dance the Highland Fling."
"Is that all?" Hazel laughed a happy laugh. "I can teach you to dance as easy as anything, if you 'll let me."
"Let you!" Rose exclaimed, flushing with pleasure; "just you try me and see. But where can we practise?"
"Oh, out in the barn," cried Hazel. "It'll be lots of fun; of course, it's awfully cold, but the skipping about will keep us warm. I 'll tell you what--I 'll play on the violin, and you and March and Budd and Cherry can learn square dances first."
"What fun!" said Rose.
"What's the joke?" asked March, coming in at that moment with Budd and Cherry.
"We 're going to have a dance in the barn; Hazel's going to teach us.
She says she can do it easy enough."
"Oh, bully!" Budd threw up his tam-o'-shanter, and Cherry, attempting to charge up and down the long-room as she had seen Hazel at the Fords', tripped on the rug and fell her length. When March had picked her up she rubbed her nose, which was growing decidedly pink, and sniffed a little, then asked suddenly:--
"Who 's going to be my partner? They always have partners in the story books."
"Sure enough," Rose laughed. "Whatever will we do, Hazel?"
"I never thought of that," said Hazel, ruefully. "Of course, it takes eight."
"Why can't we have chairs for partners?" said Cherry. "We can bow to them just as if they were alive, and make them move round, can't we?"
They all laughed at Cherry's inspiration.
"You 're a brick, Cherry Bounce?" said March, approvingly. "All choose your partners!" And, thereupon, he seized one of the kitchen chairs, and the rest followed his example. Hazel took her violin, and hooded and mittened and coated and mufflered, they trooped out to the barn, each lugging a wooden chair.
"Now I 'll give you the first four changes," said Hazel, illustrating, as well as she could in trying to be two couples at once, the first movements. "Form your square and get ready."
They obeyed with alacrity, and Hazel drew her bow across the strings.
"All curtsy to your partners!" she shouted, and the chair-partners received a bow, and, in turn, were made to thump the floor by being laid over on their backs, and righted suddenly.