Louisa May Alcott: Rose in Bloom

Chapter 18. WHICH WAS IT? (continued)

"I wish you wouldn't look at me in that way it fidgets me," she said a little petulantly, for she had been out riding, and knew that she did not present a "spiritual" appearance after the frosty air had reddened nose as well as cheeks.

"I'll try to remember. It does itself before I know it. Perhaps this may mend matters." And, taking out the blue glasses he sometimes wore in the wind, he gravely put them on.

Rose could not help laughing, but his obedience only aggravated her, for she knew he could observe her all the better behind his ugly screen.

"No, it won't they are not becoming, and I don't want to look blue when I do not feel so," she said, finding it impossible to guess what he would do next or to help enjoying his peculiarities.

"But you don't to me, for in spite of the goggles everything is rose-colored now." And he pocketed the glasses without a murmur at the charming inconsistency of his idol.

"Really, Mac, I'm tired of this nonsense, it worries me and wastes your time."

"Never worked harder. But does it really trouble you to know I love you?" he asked anxiously.

"Don't you see how cross it makes me?" And she walked away, feeling that things were not going as she intended to have them at all.

"I don't mind the thorns if I get the rose at last, and I still hope I may, some ten years hence," said this persistent suitor, quite undaunted by the prospect of a "long wait."

"I think it is rather hard to be loved whether I like it or not," objected Rose, at a loss how to make any headway against such indomitable hopefulness.

"But you can't help it, nor can I so I must go on doing it with all my heart till you marry, and then well, then I'm afraid I may hate somebody instead," and Mac spoilt the pen by an involuntary slash of his knife.