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apprehensively on the shadows thrown from the trees, for they lay so black and substantial. Occasionally a moonbeam would trace out a suave white branch that the rabbits had gnawed quite bare in the hard winter. We came out of the woods into the full heavens. The northern sky was full of a gush of green light; in front, eclipsed Orion leaned over his bed, and the moon followed.
“When the northern lights are up,” said Emily, “I feel so strange — half eerie — they do fill you with awe, don’t they?”
“Yes,” said I, “they make you wonder, and look, and expect something.”
“What do you expect?” she said softly, and looked up, and saw me smiling, and she looked down again, biting her lips.
When we came to the parting of the roads, Emily begged them just to step into the mill — just for a moment — and Lettie consented.
The kitchen window was uncurtained, and the blind, as usual, was not drawn. We peeped in through the cords of budding honeysuckle. George and Alice were sitting at the table playing chess; the mother was mending a coat, and the father, as usual, was reading. Alice was talking quietly, and George was bent on the game. His arms lay on the table.
We made a noise at the door, and entered. George rose heavily, shook hands, and sat down again.
“Hullo, Lettie Beardsall, you are a stranger,” said Alice. “Are you so much engaged?”
“Ay — we don’t see much of her nowadays,” added the father in his jovial way.
“And isn’t she a toff, in her fine hat and furs and snowdrops. Look at her, George, you’ve never looked to see what a toff she is.”
He raised his eyes, and looked at her apparel and at her flowers, but not at her face:
“Ay, she is fine,” he said, and returned to the chess.
“We have been gathering snowdrops,” said Lettie, fingering the flowers in her bosom.
“They are pretty — give me some, will you?” said Alice, holding out her hand. Lettie gave her the flowers.
“Check!” said George deliberately.
“Get out!” replied his opponent, “I’ve got some snowdrops — don’t they suit me, an innocent little soul like me? Lettie won’t wear them — she’s not meek and mild and innocent like me. Do you want some?”
“If you like — what for?”
“To make you pretty, of course, and to show you an innocent little meekling.”
“You’re in check,” he said.
“Where can you wear them? — there’s only your shirt. Aw! — there! — she stuck a few flowers in his ruffled black hair —”
“Look, Lettie, isn’t he sweet?”
Lettie laughed with a strained little laugh:
“He’s like Bottom and the ass’s head,” she said.
“Then I’m Titania — don’t I make a lovely fairy queen, Bully Bottom? — and who’s jealous Oberon?”
“He reminds me of that man in Hedda Gabler — crowned with vine leaves — oh yes, vine leaves,” said Emily.
“How’s your mare’s sprain, Mr Tempest?” George asked, taking no notice of the flowers in his hair.
“Oh — she’ll soon be all right, thanks.”
“Ah — George told me about it,” put in the father, and he held Leslie in conversation.
“Am I in check, George?” said Alice, returning to the game. She knitted her brows and cogitated:
“Pooh!” she said, “that’s soon remedied!”— she moved her piece, and said triumphantly, “Now, Sir!”
He surveyed the game, and, with deliberation moved. Alice pounced on him; with a leap of her knight she called, “Check!”
“I didn’t see it — you may have the game now,” he said.
“Beaten, my boy! — don’t crow over a woman any more. Stalemate — with flowers in your hair!”
He put his hand to his head, and felt among his hair, and threw the flowers on the table.
“Would you believe it —!” said the mother, coming into the room from the dairy.
“What?” we all asked.
“Nickie Ben’s been and eaten the sile-cloth. Yes! When I went to wash it, there sat Nickie Ben gulping, and wiping the froth off his whiskers.”
George laughed loudly and heartily. He laughed till he was tired. Lettie looked and wondered when he would be done.
“I imagined,” he gasped, “how he’d feel with half a yard of muslin creeping down his throttle.”
This laughter was most incongruous. He went off into another burst. Alice laughed too — it was easy to infect her with laughter. Then the father began — and in walked Nickie Ben, stepping disconsolately — we all roared again, till the rafters shook. Only Lettie looked impatiently for the end. George swept his bare arms across the table, and the scattered little flowers fell broken to the ground.
“Oh — what a shame!” exclaimed Lettie.
“What?” said he, looking round. “Your flowers? Do you feel sorry for them? — You’re too tender-hearted; isn’t she, Cyril?”
“Always was — for dumb animals, and things,” said I.
“Don’t you wish you was a little dumb animal, Georgie?” said Alice.
He smiled, putting away the chess-men.
“Shall we go, dear?” said Lettie to Leslie.
“If you are ready,” he replied, rising with alacrity.
“I am tired,” she said plaintively.
He attended to her with little tender solicitations.
“Have we walked too far?” he asked.
“No, it’s not that. No — it’s the snowdrops, and the man, and the children — and everything. I feel just a bit exhausted.” She kissed Alice, and Emily, and the mother.
“Good night, Alice,” she said. “It’s not altogether my fault we’re strangers. You know — really — I’m just the same — really. Only you imagine, and then what can I do?”
She said farewell to George, and looked at him through a quiver of suppressed tears.
George was somewhat flushed with triumph over Lettie: She had gone home with tears shaken from her eyes unknown to her lover; at the farm George laughed with Alice.
We escorted Alice home to Eberwich —“Like a blooming little monkey dangling from two boughs,” as she put it, when we swung her along on our arms. We laughed and said many preposterous things. George wanted to kiss her at parting, but she tipped him under the chin and said, “Sweet!” as one does to a canary. Then she laughed with her tongue between her teeth, and ran indoors.
“She is a little devil,” said he.
We took the long way home by Greymede, and passed the dark schools.
“Come on,” said he, “let’s go in the ‘Ram Inn’, and have a look at my cousin Meg.”
It was half-past ten when he marched me across the road and into the sanded passage of the little inn. The place had been an important farm in the days of George’s grand-uncle, but since his decease it had declined, under the governance of the widow and a man-of-all-work. The old grand-aunt was propped and supported by a splendid granddaughter. The near kin of Meg were all in California, so she, a bonny delightful girl of twenty-four, stayed near her grandma.
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