are right; lad; it does not matter. They have done me good service, and will yet, though they were not made for carrying nosegays.”
“There is somebody besides yourself plucking posies on the Flat. See, how large the figure looks against the sky. It might be your Titaness, John —
‘Like Proserpina gathering flowers,
Herself the fairest —’
— no, not fairest; for I declare she looks very like your friend Grey-gown — I beg her pardon — Miss March.”
“It is she,” said John, so indifferently that I suspect that fact had presented itself to him for at least two minutes before I found it out.
“There’s certainly a fatality about your meeting her.”
“Not the least. She has this morning taken her walk in a different direction, as I did; and we both chanced again to hit upon the same,” answered John, gravely and explanatorily. “Come away down the slope. We must not intrude upon a lady’s enjoyments.”
He carried me off, much against my will, for I had a great wish to see again that fresh young face, so earnest, cheerful, and good. Also, as I laboured in vain to convince my companion, the said face indicated an independent dignity which would doubtless make its owner perfectly indifferent whether her solitary walk were crossed by two gentlemen or two hundred.
John agreed to this; nevertheless, he was inexorable. And, since he was “a man of the world”— having, in his journeys up and down the country for my father, occasionally fallen into “polite” society — I yielded the point to him and submitted to his larger experience of good breeding.
However, Fate, kinder than he, took the knot of etiquette into her own hands, and broke it.
Close to the cottage door, our two paths converging, and probably our breakfast-hours likewise, brought us suddenly face to face with Miss March.
She saw us, and we had a distinct sight of her.
I was right: we and our contiguity were not of the smallest importance to Miss March. Her fresh morning roses did not deepen, nor her eyes droop, as she looked for a moment at us both — a quiet, maidenly look of mere observation. Of course no recognition passed; but there was a merry dimple beside her mouth, as if she quite well knew who we were, and owned to a little harmless feminine curiosity in observing us.
She had to pass our door, where stood Mrs. Tod and the baby. It stretched out its little arms to come to her, with that pretty, babyish gesture which I suppose no woman can resist. Miss March could not. She stopped, and began tossing up the child.
Truly, they made a pleasant picture, the two — she with her hooded cloak dropping off, showing her graceful shape, and her dark-brown hair, all gathered up in a mass of curls at the top of her head, as the fashion then was. As she stood, with her eyes sparkling, and the young blood flushing through her clear brunette cheeks, I was not sure whether I had not judged too hastily in calling her “no beauty.”
Probably, by his look, John thought the same.
She stood right before our wicket-gate; but she had evidently quite forgotten us, so happy was she with Mrs. Tod’s bonny boy, until the landlady made some remark about “letting the gentlemen by.” Then, with a slight start, drawing her hood back over her head, the young lady stepped aside.
In passing her, John raised his eyes, as was natural enough. For me, I could hardly take mine from her, such a pleasant creature was she to behold. She half smiled — he bowed, which she returned, courteously, and we both went indoors. I told him this was a good beginning of acquaintance with our neighbour.
“Not at all, no acquaintance; a mere civility between two people living under the same roof. It will never be more.”
“Probably not.”
I am afraid John was disappointed at my “probably.” I am afraid that when he stood at our window, contemplating the little group which filled up our wicket-gate, he missed some one out of the three — which, I suspect, was neither Mrs. Tod nor yet the baby.
“I like her face very much better now, David. Do you?”
It was a very curious fact, which I never noticed till afterwards, that though there had been some lapse of time before I hazarded this remark, we both intuitively supplied the noun to that indefinite personal pronoun.
“A good — nay, a noble face; though still, with those irregular features, I can’t — really I can’t — call her beautiful.”
“Nor I.”
“She bowed with remarkable grace, too. I think, John, for the first time in our lives, we may say we have seen a LADY.”
“Most certainly a lady.”
“Nay, I only meant that, girl as she is, she is evidently accustomed to what is called ‘society.’ Which makes it the more likely that her father is the Mr. March who was cousin to the Brithwoods. An odd coincidence.”
“A very odd coincidence.”
After which brief reply John relapsed into taciturnity.
More than once that morning we recurred to the subject of our neighbours — that is, I did — but John was rather saturnine and uncommunicative. Nay, when, as Mrs. Tod was removing the breakfast, I ventured to ask her a harmless question or two — who Mr. March was, and where he came from? — I was abruptly reproved, the very minute our good landlady had shut the door, for my tendency to “gossip.”
At which I only laughed, and reminded him that he had ingeniously scolded me after, not before, I had gained the desired information — namely, that Mr. March was a gentleman of independent property — that he had no friends hereabouts, and that he usually lived in Wales.
“He cannot be our Mr. March, then.”
“No,” said John, with an air of great relief.
I was amused to see how seriously he took such a trifle; ay, many a time that day I laughed at him for evincing such great sympathy over our neighbours, and especially — which was plain enough to see, though he doubtless believed he entirely disguised it — for that interest which a young man of twenty would naturally take in a very charming and personable young woman. Ay, naturally, as I said to myself, for I admired her too, extremely.
It seems strange now to call to mind that morning, and our light-hearted jests about Miss March. Strange that Destiny should often come thus, creeping like a child to our very doors; we hardly notice it, or send it away with a laugh; it comes so naturally, so simply, so accidentally, as it were, that we recognise it not. We cannot believe that the baby intruder is in reality the king of our fortunes; the ruler of our lives. But so it is continually; and since IT IS, it must be right.
We finished the morning by reading Shakspeare — Romeo and Juliet — at which the old folio seemed naturally to open. There is a time — a sweet time, too, though it does not last — when to every young mind the play of plays, the poem of poems, is Romeo and Juliet. We were at that phase now.
John read it all through to me — not for the first time either; and then, thinking I had fallen asleep, he sat with the book on his knee, gazing out of the open window.
It was a warm summer day — breathless, soundless — a day for quietness and dreams. Sometimes a bee came buzzing among the roses, in and away again, like a happy thought. Nothing else was stirring; not a single bird was to be seen or heard, except that now and then came a coo of the wood-pigeons among the beech-trees — a low, tender voice — reminding one of a mother’s crooning over a cradled child; or of two true lovers standing clasped heart to heart, in the first embrace, which finds not, and needs not, a single word.
John sat listening. What was he thinking about? Why that strange quiver about his mouth? — why that wonderful new glow, that infinite depth of softness in his eyes?
I