Stray Sheep (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MISS BEECHER AND MISS BYNG. CHAPTER I. "I Am lucky to have caught you in the garden, Trixy! I was afraid I should have to go in and pay a set formal call on mamma and you, in the drawing-room." " It needn't be either ' set or formal' just because it happens to be in a drawing- room, Ned, and for goodness' sake don't call me ' Trixy;' you know I hate it, and yet you and everybody else will persist in using it." " I always forget," he says hurriedly, and though he means his words to be taken as an apology for his forgetfulness, there is nothing apologetic in either his tone or VOL. II. 4 manner. " I am always doing something stupid now, and putting you out of patience with me, Trix?Trixy." "Never mind, you poor, awkward old fellow," she says good-temperedly, banishing the cloud of annoyance from her brow in a moment, as she detects something earnest and unfeigned in his accents. " I am privileged to be as cross as I please to-day, you know." " Yes," he says eagerly, " to-day and every other day as far as I'm concerned. I came up to wish you many happy returns of the day. I have been thinking of that poem of Longfellow's all the morning, Trixy? ' Standing with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet.' " "The feet are not a bit reluctant," she laughs out, forgetting, in her amazement at the sentimental mistake he is making, to call him to account for addressing her by the obnoxious name again. " So far from beingreluctant they are ready and willing to leap into all that's before them. My name will be put on mamma's card now. I shall go up and stay a good part of the season with Ada in town, and my allowance is to be doubled at once; don't talk about my feet being ' reluctant' any more." "You haven't mentioned the ...