)
'Of course I do, Rodney. A poor, unfriended girl living in this remote
place, against a United States surgeon with the best of Boston behind
him.'
'I wish you would tell me that every day, Aunt Sarah,' was the reply I
received. It set me musing, but I could make nothing of it. Troubled
without knowing why, I suggested to Archie that he should endeavor to
interest our surgeon in the fort gayety; there was something for every
night in the merry little circle,--games, suppers, tableaux, music,
theatricals, readings, and the like.
'Why, he's in the thick of it already, Aunt Sarah,' said my nephew.
'He's devoting himself to Miss Augusta; she sings "The Harp that
once--" to him every night.'
('The Harp that once through Tara's Halls', was Miss Augusta's
dress-parade song. The Major's quarters not being as large as the
halls aforesaid, the melody was somewhat overpowering.)
'O, does she?' I thought, not without a shade of vexation. But the
vague anxiety vanished.
The real spring came at last,--the rapid, vivid spring of Mackinac.
Almost in a day the ice moved out, the snows melted, and the northern
wild-flowers appeared in the sheltered glens.
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