Innocent | Page 2

Marie Corelli
only for their own lifetime,
but for the lifetime of their children and their children's children; and
the idea that their children's children might possibly fail to appreciate
the strenuousness and worth of their labours never entered their simple
brains.
The farmyard was terminated at its other end by a broad stone archway,
which showed as in a semi-circular frame the glint of scarlet geraniums
in the distance, and in the shadow cast by this embrasure was the small
unobtrusive figure of a girl. She stood idly watching the hens pecking
at their food and driving away their offspring from every chance of
sharing bit or sup with them,--and as she noted the greedy triumph of
the strong over the weak, the great over the small, her brows drew
together in a slight frown of something like scorn. Yet hers was not a
face that naturally expressed any of the unkind or harsh emotions. It
was soft and delicately featured, and its rose-white tints were illumined
by grave, deeply-set grey eyes that were full of wistful and questioning
pathos. In stature she was below the middle height and slight of build,
so that she seemed a mere child at first sight, with nothing particularly
attractive about her except, perhaps, her hands. These were daintily
shaped and characteristic of inbred refinement, and as they hung
listlessly at her sides looked scarcely less white than the white cotton
frock she wore. She turned presently with a movement of impatience
away from the sight of the fussy and quarrelsome fowls, and looking up
at the quaint gables of the farmhouse uttered a low, caressing call. A
white dove flew down to her instantly, followed by another and yet
another. She smiled and extended her arms, and a whole flock of the
birds came fluttering about her in a whirl of wings, perching on her
shoulders and alighting at her feet. One that seemed to enjoy a position
of special favouritism, flew straight against her breast,--she caught it
and held it there. It remained with her quite contentedly, while she
stroked its velvety neck.

"Poor Cupid!" she murmured. "You love me, don't you? Oh yes, ever
so much! Only you can't tell me so! I'm glad! You wouldn't be half so
sweet if you could!"
She kissed the bird's soft head, and still stroking it scattered all the
others around her by a slight gesture, and went, followed by a snowy
cloud of them, through the archway into the garden beyond. Here there
were flower-beds formally cut and arranged in the old-fashioned Dutch
manner, full of sweet-smelling old- fashioned things, such as stocks
and lupins, verbena and mignonette,--there were box-borders and
clumps of saxifrage, fuchsias, and geraniums,--and roses that grew in
every possible way that roses have ever grown, or can ever grow. The
farmhouse fronted fully on this garden, and a magnificent "Glory" rose
covered it from its deep black oaken porch to its highest gable,
wreathing it with hundreds of pale golden balls of perfume. A real
"old" rose it was, without any doubt of its own intrinsic worth and
sweetness,--a rose before which the most highly trained hybrids might
hang their heads for shame or wither away with envy, for the air around
it was wholly perfumed with its honey-scented nectar, distilled from
peaceful years upon years of sunbeams and stainless dew. The girl, still
carrying her pet dove, walked slowly along the narrow gravelled paths
that encircled the flower- beds and box-borders, till, reaching a low
green door at the further end of the garden, she opened it and passed
through into a newly mown field, where several lads and men were
about busily employed in raking together the last swaths of a full crop
of hay and adding them to the last waggon which stood in the centre of
the ground, horseless, and piled to an almost toppling height. One
young fellow, with a crimson silk tie knotted about his open shirt-collar,
stood on top of the lofty fragrant load, fork in hand, tossing the
additional heaps together as they were thrown up to him. The afternoon
sun blazed burningly down on his uncovered head and bare brown arms,
and as he shook and turned the hay with untiring energy, his
movements were full of the easy grace and picturesqueness which are
often the unconscious endowment of those whose labour keeps them
daily in the fresh air. Occasional bursts of laughter and scraps of rough
song came from the others at work, and there was only one absolutely
quiet figure among them, that of an old man sitting on an upturned

barrel which had been but recently emptied of its home-brewed beer,
meditatively smoking a long clay pipe. He wore a smock frock and
straw hat, and under the brim of
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