_March._ You don’t say so. Why, Mother Gale, you might have been a rich lady.
_Mrs. G._ P’raps I might, March; p’raps I might: but I chose John Gale; and I never regretted it, never.
_March._ Bully for you, Mother Gale, and bully for Daddy Gale, too. He’s a trump. But I say, Mother Gale, isn’t Miss Kate a beauty? My eyes! Keep a sharp look-out, Mother Gale, a sharp eye on our Sept.; for, if I’m not much mistaken, he’s over head and ears in love with her.
_Mrs. G._ Goodness, gracious! what an awful idea!
_March._ Awful! perhaps it is; but she likes it. I’ve seen them on the rocks as chipper as a pair of blackbirds; her eyes glistening and her cheeks rosy, while Sept. was pouring all sorts of soft speeches into her ears.
_Mrs. G._ Heavens and airth! this won’t do! I’ll tell your father of this the minit he comes home.
_March._ No you won’t, Mother Gale. Hush, here’s the young lady now.
_Mrs. G._ To be sure you may, and welcome (_places a chair, R., and dusts it with her apron_). It’s awful dirty here.
_Kate_ (_sits_). Dirt? I have not yet been able to discover a particle in the house. It’s a miracle of cleanliness. Well, March, what are you doing?
_March._ Oh! fixin’ up the lines a little.
_Kate._ Who was singing? While I was sewing I’m sure I heard a musical voice.
_March._ No: did you though? Do you hear that, Mother Gale. Miss Kate heard a musical voice. I am the owner of that voice, and I’m mighty proud of it; for there’s precious little I do own in this world.
_Mrs. G._ Fiddlesticks! there’s no more music in that boy than there is in a nor’easter.
_March._ Now, Mother Gale, don’t show your ignorance of music. Yes, Miss Kate, I should cultivate it; but then, you see. I’m an orphan.
_March._ Yes, an orphan,--a poor, miserable, red-headed orphan. The only nurse I ever had was the sea, and a precious wet one she was.
_Kate._ Do you mean to say you are not the son of John Gale?
_March._ That’s the melancholy fact: I’m nobody’s son. I was found upon the sands, after a fearful storm and a shipwreck, very wet and very hungry, by Daddy Gale. This little occurrence was in the month of March. Fearing, from my youth and inexperience, I should be likely to forget the circumstances of my birth, Daddy Gale christened me March, and it’s been march ever since. You march here, and you march there.