A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill | Page 8

now and were walking their horses up to the stile where Jimpson was waiting to take them.
"Don't put my mare up," directed Donald. "I've got to ride back to town to-night. There's rain in those clouds; I ought to be starting this minute."
But his haste was evidently not imperative, for he followed Miss Lady through the narrow winding paths, between a tangle of shrubs and vines, into the old-fashioned flower garden. The spiraea was just putting out its long, feathery plumes of white, and the lilacs nodded white and purple in the breeze.
"Here's the first wild rose!" cried Miss Lady, darting to a corner of the old stone wall; "the idea of its daring to come out so soon!"
He took the frail little blossom and smiled at it half quizzically: "It's funny," he said awkwardly, "your giving me this. You know, it's what you made me think of, the first time I saw you,--a wild rose. Didn't she, Mike?"
Mike, who had been dreaming all afternoon on the porch, had gotten up reluctantly as they passed and followed them. He had a slow, lopsided gait, and his tongue dangled from the side of his mouth. It was evidently a sacrifice for him to accompany them, but duty was duty.
"You angel dog! Come here to your Missus!" commanded Miss Lady, as she and Donald dropped down in the old barrel-stave hammock, that had swung beneath the lilacs since the Colonel was a boy.
But Mike ambled past her, and after snuggling up to Don with a great show of intimacy lay down at his feet.
"I'm glad somebody loves me," Donald said.
"It's your riding boots, Mike likes. He never had a chance to taste tan shoe polish before!"
"What do you like me for?"
"Me? Who said I did?"
"Don't you?"
"Oh, yes, I like tan boots, too. Why didn't you tell me my hair had tumbled down again?"
"Because you are so beautiful, with it like that, Miss Lady--"
"Now, Don, if you begin again I shall go straight in the house. What did you mean by saying you had gotten what was worst for you, and you had made the worst of it?"
"Oh, the way I've been brought up. You see my sister took me when I was a baby, and I guess I was an awful nuisance to her. She liked to travel, and kept it up a good while even after Margery was born. I grew up in hotels and on steamers and trains, going to school wherever we happened to be staying long enough; sometimes in France, sometimes in Switzerland, sometimes in America. I remember one Christmas when I was about six, we were in a hotel in Paris. My nurse put me to bed early so she could go out with her sweetheart, and told me there wasn't any Santa Claus, so I wouldn't stay awake watching for him. I hate that woman to this day! I can remember the big, lonesome room, and the red curtains, and the crystal chandelier and the way I cried because there wasn't any Santa Claus, and because I didn't have a sweetheart!"
"Poor little chap! It was a mother you wanted."
"Perhaps. Sister was good to me. But she didn't understand me; she never has. She has always given me too much of everything, advice included."
"But since you have been grown, you've had lots of time to--to--take things into your own hands."
"Well, I did for a while. I managed to squeeze through the university, then I went into the shops and had a bully time for five months, but it made no end of a row! Sister felt that after all she had done for me, I oughtn't to go dead against her wishes, and I guess she was right. Then I went into the bank and was beginning to get the hang of things, when she had a nervous collapse and was ordered to Egypt for the winter. My brother-in-law couldn't take her, so he sent me."
"But you stayed longer than she did."
"Yes, I played around on the Riviera for a while."
"And you have been home, how long?"
"Three months. Honestly, I meant to buckle down to something right off, but Cropsie Decker got this offer to go to the Orient for the Herald-Post, and asked me to go along. I was keen about it until--until I came down here."
They were both silent for a while, watching a spider that was exploring Don's boot-lace.
"It all seems so footless now. What I want is a house of my own, a home, I mean. I never had much of that sort of thing--I'm not quite sure I knew what a home was until I saw Thornwood."
"Isn't it dear?" asked Miss Lady with a loving look over her shoulder at the old house silhouetted against the sky. "I could kiss every brick