The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding Part 10

"At home one would send such a dish back to the kitchen in red-hot wrath. Here one eats it in a sort of solemn joy."

"It's the spell of the June woods," suggested Miss Marks.

"No, it's youth in the blood," said Leland. "All the Junes in the world and all outdoors wouldn't make a half-baked potato fit for the G.o.ds unless one has 'the sun and the wind in his pulses.'"

"No," insisted Gay. "It can't be that, for Jameson isn't much older than you, and he despises prowling around in the woods, as he calls it. He made so much fun of it that Lucy went driving with him instead of coming with us, and she adores such outings, just as much now as she did before she was married."

"Maybe no one feels the charm unless the G.o.ds have given him a sort of Midas touch that will turn everything disagreeable, like ants and underdone potatoes, into golden experiences," said Alex. "The Midas imagination let us call it. And the way to keep it in good working order is to give it constant practice. Let's have a picnic every day."

"To-morrow," announced Leland, "I'll take you all over to that old English garden that I discovered, to take that Garden fancy of Browning's we were discussing."

Gay looked up quickly. It had been understood only yesterday that they were to wait for Kitty's return for that picture. His taking it for granted that Lloyd would a.s.sume the part augured well for her hopes.

"You know that poem of Browning's, don't you, Miss Sherman?" he asked, smiling across at her.

Now Lloyd had never cared for Browning. In fact she frankly admitted that she had never got far enough into many of his poems to know what he was talking about. At Warwick Hall Miss Chilton had been such an enthusiastic interpreter of his that ten of the girls in Lloyd's cla.s.s had formed a Browning club. Although she declined their invitation to join them, she was more complimented by that invitation than any other of that school term, and envied them their apparent enjoyment of what to her was a tangle of vague meanings. Now when, she saw Leland take a well worn copy from his pocket and flip over the leaves to find the place, with an ease that showed long familiarity with it, she wished that she had joined the club. It made her feel childish and immature to think that she could not discuss this subject with him as any one of those ten girls could have done. But it was one of the simple poems to which the book opened. From her seat opposite, Lloyd could see the marked margins and underscored lines, as he read aloud:

"'Here is the garden she walked across Arm in my arm such a short while since.

Down this side of the gravel walk She went, while her robe's edge brushed the box.

And here she paused in her gracious talk To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox.'"

"Oh, I can just _see_ that picture," cried Miss Marks enthusiastically.

"I wish we had time to take it to-day."

"But wait, here's a better one," he added, turning the page.

"'This flower she stopped at, finger on lip, Stooped over in doubt, as settling its claim, Till she gave me with pride to make no slip, Its soft, meandering Spanish name.

What a name! Was it love or praise?

Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?

I must learn Spanish one of these days Only for that slow, sweet name's sake.'"

Lloyd picked up the book open at the place where he laid it, face downward, on the rock.

"I wondah what flowah Browning meant," she said, "that had such a 'soft, meandering Spanish name. Speech half-asleep or song half-awake--' It must have been something exquisitely beautiful or he wouldn't have been willing to learn a language just for the sake of knowing that one name."

Farther down the page were other underscored lines. She read them softly, almost under her breath.

"'Where I find her not, beauties vanish.

Whither I follow her beauties flee.

Is there no method to tell her in Spanish June is twice June since she's breathed it with me?'"

"Isn't that sweet?" cried Gay. "Say it for us, Leland. Say it in Spanish so we can hear how it sounds."

With an indulgent smile, as if amused at her childishness, he lazily did Gay's bidding, then as she began exclaiming over the musical syllables to Alex, he turned to Lloyd and repeated the line with an emphasis which made it altogether personal. Of course she could not understand it, but the words were like bird-notes, and there was no mistaking the language of those dark expressive eyes that held hers a moment in their admiring gaze. They said as plainly as if they had spoken aloud, "June is twice June, since _you've_ breathed it with me."

Lloyd felt the colour surge up into her face, and to hide it, turned quickly and began examining a gra.s.s stain on the hem of her skirt, with apparent concern. But an exultant little thrill flashed over her. He liked her. She was sure of it, and it made her glad, so glad that it amazed her to think that only two hours before she had confided emphatically to a little black ant crawling over her path, that she couldn't bear him.

When she had finished a critical examination of the gra.s.s stain she glanced back again, hoping that Gay had not seen her embarra.s.sment. To her relief Gay's entire attention was absorbed in an argument with Alex as to the exact meaning of the quotation, whether twice June meant a lengthening of the calendar or an intensifying of its pleasures. Miss Marks, like a good chaperone, could not have noticed, for she was busy gathering up the dishes, and Lloyd sprang up to help her.

Presently, as they started away from the spring, Leland came around to Lloyd's side. "You must let me teach you Spanish, Miss Sherman," he said in his masterful way which seemed to leave her no choice in the matter.

"An hour a day wouldn't take much of your time, and would be enough to give you some idea of the charm of the language. Gay tells me you play the harp. Some of the songs are exquisite."

"Oh, I nevah in the world could learn it, I am suah!" she answered lightly, with a shrug that seemed to indicate the uselessness of undertaking such a task.

"You don't know," he answered authoritatively. "You've never had me for a teacher."

Again that flas.h.i.+ng look that made his eyes deepen so wonderfully and curved the cynical lips into an altogether gentle and winning smile. It seemed to photograph itself on Lloyd's memory, recurring to her again and again in the most unexpected moments. She saw it on the way home with Alex, all the time she was laughingly recounting some of her Warwick Hall escapades. It came between her and her book when she tried to read herself to sleep that afternoon, and the last thing that night when her eyes were closed and the lights were out she saw again that glance that said as plainly as the slow music of his Spanish words, "June is _twice_ June since _you've_ breathed it with me."

CHAPTER VII

SPANISH LESSONS

THE Harcourt carriage swung rapidly along the road, for the Little Colonel held the reins, and was testing the speed of the new horses, just sent down from Lexington.

"Isn't it glorious?" she cried, with a quick glance over her shoulder at Gay and Miss Marks on the back seat. "It's like flying, the way they take us through the air, and they're the best matched team in the country."

Leland, on the seat beside her, watched with growing admiration her expert handling of the horses, and Gay watched him. Swathed in a white chiffon veil, she was paying the penalty for being so obliging the day before. She had lain so long on the rocks in her pose of the drowned fishermaiden, that her face was burned to a blister, and she could not touch it without groaning. But she would willingly go through the ordeal again, she told herself, in order to bring about the present desirable state of affairs.

"Now which way?" asked Lloyd as they came to a turn. "I feel like a Columbus on an unsailed sea. I thought I knew every gah'den around heah within a radius of five miles, but I've nevah seen any that fits the description of the one you're taking us to."

"Turn to the right," Leland directed. "Then it's just a short way down a woodland road. You'll come to an old-fas.h.i.+oned wicket gate and a straight, box-bordered walk leading up to the back of such a quaint vine-covered old house with a red door, that you'll expect to see a thatched roof and hear an English skylark."

"Well, of all things," laughed Lloyd, "why didn't you say little red doah in the first place. That would have located it for me. You've simply discovahed the back premises of old Doctah Shelby's place, and yoah wondahful English gah'den is their kitchen gah'den. We could have reached their front gate in ten minutes from our house, and heah you have led us all around Robin Hood's bahn to find it. That loop around Rollington took us a good two miles out of the way."

"Well, that's the only way I knew how to reach it," he answered, with the flas.h.i.+ng smile she had learned to look for. "I hope that you don't feel that it has been time wasted. _I_ don't."

"Not behind hawses like these," she answered. "We'll forgive you for the sake of the ride. I nevah get tiahed of driving when I can go this fast."

She turned into a narrow lane leading around to the front of the house, and waited for Leland to open the gate.

"How natural everything looks," she exclaimed. "I haven't been heah for yeahs, and when I was a little thing of six or seven I used to be a weekly visitah. I'd bring my dawg Fritz, and stay from breakfast till bedtime. I called Doctah Shelby 'Mistah-_my_-doctah' and his wife 'Aunt Alicia,'" she went on as Leland resumed his seat in the carriage. "They said that I reminded them of their only daughtah, who was dead, and they used to borrow me by the day. They spoiled me so that it was perfectly scandalous the way I acted sometimes."

"Why did you stop coming?" asked Gay.

"Mrs. Shelby had a fall that made an invalid of her, and she has been away at sanitariums and hospitals most of the time since. I've seen her often, of co'se, but not heah. It's only lately that they've opened up the house and come home to live."

Places exercised a strong influence over Lloyd. Just as she felt the challenge of the locust-trees in the avenue at home, and could not pa.s.s those old family sentinels without an unconscious lifting of the head and that pride of bearing which they seemed to expect from all the Lloyds, so this old homestead had its peculiar effect upon her. As she went up the path she had the same feeling of absolute sovereignty that she had had a dozen years before when her slightest wish was law in this adoring household, and where every act of hers, no matter how outbreaking, pa.s.sed unchided. If she chose to empty the sugar into the middle of the garden walk and fill the bowl with pebbles, "Aunt Alicia"

took her afternoon tea unsweetened, rather than ring for more, and thus call Mom Beck's attention to the naughtiness of her little charge.

Once, some babyish whim prompting her to order every picture turned to the wall, the doctor meekly obeyed, and when some chance caller remonstrated, he protested that it was a very small thing to do to give a child pleasure, and that there was no reason why she shouldn't have them upside down if she wished. So strong was the old spell now, that as she stepped up on the porch and saw the same ugly little Chinese idol sitting against the front door to prop it open, that had sat there on all her former visits, she stooped and stood it on its head.