"I beg your pardon, Nellie; I did not mean to frighten you," replied Donald.
"I don't suppose you did, Don John; but you startled me just as much as though you had meant it," added she, with a pleasant smile, so forgiving that the young man had no fear of the consequences. "How terribly hot it is! I am almost melted."
"It is very warm," answered Donald, who, somehow or other, found it very difficult to carry on a conversation with Nellie; and his eyes seemed to him to be twice as serviceable as his tongue.
And so they went on repeating the same thing over and over again, till there was no other known form of expression for warm weather.
"How in the world did you get to the side of my chair without my hearing you?" demanded Nellie, when it was evidently impossible to say anything more about the heat.
"I came up the front steps, and was walking around on the piazza to your father's library. I didn't see you till you spoke," replied Donald, reminded by this explanation that he had come to Captain Patterdale's house for a purpose. "Is Ned at home?"
"No; he has gone up to Searsport to stay over Sunday with uncle Henry."
"Has he? I'm sorry. Is your father at home?"
"He is in his library, and there is some one with him. Won't you sit down, Don John?"
"Thank you," added Donald, seating himself in a rustic chair. "It is very warm this afternoon."
Nellie actually laughed, for she was conscious of the difficulties of the situation--more so than her visitor. But we must do our hero--for such he is--the justice to say, that he did not refer to the exhausted topic with the intention of confining the conversation to it, but to introduce the business which had called him to the house.
"It is intensely hot, Don John," laughed Nellie.
"But I was going to ask you if you would not like to take a sail," said Donald, with a blush. "With your father, I mean," added he, with a deeper blush, as he realized that he had actually asked a girl to go out in a boat with him.
"I should be delighted to go, but I can't. Mother won't let me go on the water when the sun is out, it hurts my eyes so," answered Nellie; and the young man was sure she was very sorry she could not go.
"Perhaps we can go after sunset, then," suggested Donald. "I am sorry Ned is not at home; for his yacht is finished, and father says the paint is dry enough to use her. We are going to have a little trial trip in her over to Turtle Head, and, perhaps, round by Searsport."