She sat with hands clasped in her lap and gazed at her manly
offspring.
"Oh, I do think it's so beautiful!" she murmured occasionally to me,
aside. "Oh, yes, ain't it beautiful?"
Once, she remarked in greater confidence; "Oh, he's dreadful wild!"
"Lovell?" I inquired, with impulsive incredulity.
"Oh, dreadful!" she continued. "I don't know what he'd ben if we hadn't
always restrained him. But somehow, I think there's something dreadful
bewitchin' about such folks. Don't yew?"
"Very," I answered with vague, though ardent sympathy.
"Oh, dreadful!" she responded.
Meanwhile the perspiration stood out on Lovell's grave countenance, and
his head, like a laborious sledge-hammer, was swaying mechanically
backward and forward.
"Sing bass, now, Lovell," said Mrs. Barlow; and the expression of awed
delight and expectancy on her face, as she uttered these words, was a
rebuke to all cynics and unbelievers of any sort whatever.
"Yes'm, so I will, certainly," said Lovell; "so I will, and if I hadn't
got such a cold, I'd come down heavy on it too."
"What do you think?" Mrs. Barlow went on in the same confidential aside
to me; "he's took it into his head that he wants to get married! Oh, yes,
he has really! and I think it's a wonder he never got set on it before.
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