But in the days when Letty Morris looked out of the coach window, and young Alfred murmured that the prospect was fair indeed, conversation was perfectly correct. And it was still decorous even when it got beyond the coach period and reached a point where Old Chester began to take notice. At first it was young Old Chester which giggled. Later old Old Chester made some comments; it was then that Alfred's mother mentioned the matter to Alfred's father. “He is young, and, of course, foolish,” Mrs. Price explained. And Mr. Price said that though folly was incidental to Alfred's years, it must be checked.
Then Miss Letty's mother awoke to the situation, and said, “Fy, fy, Letitia.”
So it was that these two young persons were plunged in grief. Oh, glorious grief of thwarted love! When they met now, they did not talk of the landscape. Their conversation, though no doubt as genteel as before, was all of broken hearts. But again Letty's mother found out, and went in wrath to call on Alfred's family. It was decided between them that the young man should be sent away from home. “To save him,” says the father. “To protect my daughter,” says Mrs. Morris.
But Alfred and Letty had something to say.... It was in December; there was a snow-storm--a storm which Lydia Wright would certainly have called “awful”; but it did not interfere with true love; these two children met in the graveyard to swear undying constancy. Alfred's lantern came twinkling through the flakes, as he threaded his way across the hillside among the tombstones, and found Letty just inside the entrance, standing with her black serving-woman under a tulip-tree. The negress, chattering with cold and fright, kept plucking at the girl's pelisse; but once Alfred was at her side, Letty was indifferent to storm and ghosts. As for Alfred, he was too cast down to think of them.
“Yes. Yes, they will. Oh, if you were only mine!”
“Will you be true to me, Letty? I am to go on a sailing-vessel to China, to be gone two years. Will you wait for me?”
Letty gave a little cry; two years! Her black woman twitched her sleeve.
“(Don't, Flora.)--Alfred, _two years!_ Oh, Alfred, that is an eternity. Why, I should be--I should be twenty!”
The lantern, set on a tombstone beside them, blinked in a snowy gust. Alfred covered his face with his hands, he was shaken to his soul; the little, gay creature beside him thrilled at a sound from behind those hands.