Innocent | Page 5

soft brown, with delicious little sunbeams lost in it,--and such a lot of it!
I've seen it all down, remember! And your eyes would draw the heart
out of any man and send him anywhere,--yes, Innocent!--anywhere,--to
Heaven or to Hell!"
She coloured a little.
"That's beautiful talk!" she said,--"It's like poetry, but it isn't true!"
"It is true!" he said, with fond insistence. "And I'll MAKE you love
me!"
"Ah, no!" A look of the coldest scorn suddenly passed over her
features--"that's not possible. You could never MAKE me do anything!
And--it's rude of you to speak in such a way. Please let go my hand!"
He dropped it instantly, and sprang erect.
"All right! I'll leave you to yourself,--and Cupid!" Here he laughed

rather bitterly. "What made you give that bird such a name?"
"I found it in a book," she answered,--"It's a name that was given to the
god of Love when he was a little boy."
"I know that! Please don't teach me my A.B.C.," said Robin, half-
sulkily.
She leaned back laughing, and singing softly:
"Love was once a little boy, Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho! Then 'twas sweet
with him to toy, Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho!"
Her eyes sparkled in the sun,--a tress of her hair, ruffled by the hay,
escaped and flew like a little web of sunbeams against her cheek. He
looked at her moodily.
"You might go on with the song," he said,--"'Love is now a little
man--'"
"'And a very naughty one!'" she hummed, with a mischievous upward
glance.
Despite his inward vexation, he smiled.
"Say what you like, Cupid is a ridiculous name for a dove," he said.
"It rhymes to stupid," she replied, demurely,--"And the rhyme
expresses the nature of the bird and--the god!"
"Pooh! You think that clever!"
"I don't! I never said a clever thing in my life. I shouldn't know how.
Everything clever has been written over and over again by people in
books."
"Hang books!" he exclaimed. "It's always books with you! I wish we
had never found that old chest of musty volumes in the panelled room."

"Do you? Then you are sillier than I thought you were. The books
taught me all I know,--about love!"
"About love! You don't know what love means!" he declared, trampling
the hay he stood upon with impatience. "You read and read, and you
get the queerest ideas into your head, and all the time the world goes on
in ways that are quite different from what YOU are thinking
about,--and lovers walk through the fields and lanes everywhere near us
every year, and you never appear to see them or to envy them--"
"Envy them!" The girl opened her eyes wide. "Envy them! Oh, Cupid,
hear! Envy them! Why should I envy them? Who could envy Mr. and
Mrs. Pettigrew?"
"What nonsense you talk!" he exclaimed,--"Mr. and Mrs. Pettigrew are
married folk, not lovers!"
"But they were lovers once," she said,--"and only three years ago. I
remember them, walking through the lanes and fields as you say, with
arms round each other,--and Mrs. Pettigrew's hands were always
dreadfully red, and Mr. Pettigrew's fingers were always dirty,--and they
married very quickly,--and now they've got two dreadful babies that
scream all day and all night, and Mrs. Pettigrew's hair is never tidy and
Pettigrew himself--well, you know what he does!--"
"Gets drunk every night," interrupted Robin, crossly,--"I know! And I
suppose you think I'm another Pettigrew?"
"Oh dear, no!" And she laughed with the heartiest merriment. "You
never could, you never would be a Pettigrew! But it all comes to the
same thing--love ends in marriage, doesn't it?"
"It ought to," said Robin, sententiously.
"And marriage ends--in Pettigrews!"
"Innocent!"

"Don't say 'Innocent' in that reproachful way! It makes me feel quite
guilty! Now,--if you talk of names,--THERE'S a name to give a poor
girl,--Innocent! Nobody ever heard of such a name--"
"You're wrong. There were thirteen Popes named Innocent between the
years 402 and 1724," said Robin, promptly,--"and one of them,
Innocent the Eleventh, is a character in Browning's 'Ring and the
Book.'"
"Dear me!" And her eyes flashed provocatively. "You astound me with
your wisdom, Robin! But all the same, I don't believe any girl ever had
such a name as Innocent, in spite of thirteen Popes. And perhaps the
Thirteen had other names?"
"They had other baptismal names," he explained, with a learned air.
"For instance, Pope Innocent the Third was Cardinal Lothario before he
became Pope, and he wrote a book called 'De Contemptu Mundi sive
de Miseria Humanae Conditionis!'"
She looked at him as he uttered the sonorous sounding Latin, with a
comically respectful air of attention, and then laughed like a
child,--laughed till the tears came into her eyes.
"Oh Robin, Robin!" she cried--"You are simply delicious! The most
enchanting boy! That