An agonizing shriek came buzzing to Alonzo’s ear, like the sharp buzzing of a hurt gnat; it lost power in traveling five thousand miles.  Alonzo hastened to say: 

“Calm yourself, my child.  It is nothing.  Already I am getting well under the sweet healing of your presence.  Rosannah?”

“Yes, Alonzo?  Oh, how you terrified me!  Say on.”

“Name the happy day, Rosannah!”

There was a little pause.  Then a diffident small voice replied, “I blush—­but it is with pleasure, it is with happiness.  Would—­would you like to have it soon?”

“This very night, Rosannah!  Oh, let us risk no more delays.  Let it be now!—­this very night, this very moment!”

“Oh, you impatient creature!  I have nobody here but my good old uncle, a missionary for a generation, and now retired from service—­nobody but him and his wife.  I would so dearly like it if your mother and your Aunt Susan—­”

“Our mother and our Aunt Susan, my Rosannah.”

“Yes, our mother and our Aunt Susan—­I am content to word it so if it pleases you; I would so like to have them present.”

“So would I. Suppose you telegraph Aunt Susan.  How long would it take her to come?”

“The steamer leaves San Francisco day after tomorrow.  The passage is eight days.  She would be here the 31st of March.”

“Then name the 1st of April; do, Rosannah, dear.”

“Mercy, it would make us April fools, Alonzo!”

“So we be the happiest ones that that day’s suit looks down upon in the whole broad expanse of the globe, why need we care?  Call it the 1st of April, dear.”

“Then the 1st of April at shall be, with all my heart!”

“Oh, happiness!  Name the hour, too, Rosannah.”

“I like the morning, it is so blithe.  Will eight in the morning do, Alonzo?”

“The loveliest hour in the day—­since it will make you mine.”

There was a feeble but frantic sound for some little time, as if wool-upped, disembodied spirits were exchanging kisses; then Rosannah said, “Excuse me just a moment, dear; I have an appointment, and am called to meet it.”

The young girl sought a large parlor and took her place at a window which looked out upon a beautiful scene.  To the left one could view the charming Nuuana Valley, fringed with its ruddy flush of tropical flowers and its plumed and graceful cocoa palms; its rising foothills clothed in the shining green of lemon, citron, and orange groves; its storied precipice beyond, where the first Kamehameha drove his defeated foes over to their destruction, a spot that had forgotten its grim history, no doubt, for now it was smiling, as almost always at noonday, under the glowing arches of a succession of rainbows.  In front of the window one could see the quaint town, and here and there a picturesque group of dusky natives, enjoying the blistering weather; and far to the right lay the restless ocean, tossing its white mane in the sunshine.