The Yacht Club by Oliver Optic — Read

"Why, Don John, how you frightened me! " exclaimed Miss Nellie / Patterdale, as she sprang up from her reclining position in a / lolling-chair.

It was an intensely warm day near the close of June, and the young lady / had chosen the coolest and shadiest place she could find on the piazza / of her father's elegant mansion in Belfast. She was as pretty as she was / bright and vivacious, and was a general favorite among the pupils of the / High School, which she attended. She was deeply absorbed in the reading / of a story in one of the July magazines, which had just come from the / post-office, when she heard a step near her. The sound startled her, it / was so near; and, looking up, she discovered the young man whom she had / spoken to close beside her. He was not Don John of Austria, but Donald / John Ramsay of Belfast, who had been addressed by his companions simply / as Don, a natural abbreviation of his first name, until he of Austria / happened to be mentioned in the history recitation in school, when the / whole class looked at Don, and smiled; some of the girls even giggled, / and got a check for it; but the republican young gentleman became a / titular Spanish hidalgo from that moment. Though he was the son of a / boat-builder, by trade a ship carpenter, he was a good-looking, and / gentlemanly fellow, and was treated with kindness and consideration by / most of the sons and daughters of the wealthy men of Belfast, who / attended the High School. It was hardly a secret that Don John regarded / Miss Nellie with especial admiration, or that, while he was polite to / all the young ladies, he was particularly so to her. It is a fact, too, / that he blushed when she turned her startled gaze upon him on the / piazza; and it is just as true that Miss Nellie colored deeply, though / it may have been only the natural consequence of her surprise.