"Whose child is this, I wonder?" thought he a dozen times: but, in
the hints he had solicited from Mr. Brown upon manners, none had
been more urgent than that forbidding inquisition into other
people's affairs; and indeed Teddy's natural tact and refinement
would have prevented his erring in this respect. So now he held his
peace, and slept unsatisfied.
This may have been the reason of his rising unusually early,--in
fact, while the rosy clouds of dawn were yet in the sky,--and quietly
leaving the house with the purpose of a river-bath. Strolling some
distance down the bank, until the intervening trees shut off the
house, he plunged in, and found himself much refreshed by a swim of
ten minutes through waters gorgeous with the colors of the
sunrise-sky; and, as he paused to notice them, Teddy muttered,--
"The poor little sister! She'd have done just the same if she'd been
here."
It was hardly time to return to the house when the young man stood
again upon the bank; and he strolled on through the wood, at this
point touching upon the river so closely, that a broken reflection
of the green foliage curved and shimmered along the fast-flowing
waves.
Teddy looked at the water; he looked at the trees; he looked long
and eagerly across the wide prairie that far westward imperceptibly
melted its dim green into the faint blue of the horizon, leaving
between the two a belt of tender color, nameless, but inexpressibly
tempting and suggestive to the eye.
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