Nancy | Page 7

my advent. The other says:
"Come into the kitchen-garden, and see whether the apricot-flowers are
out on the south wall."

We pace along the broad and even gravel walk among the red cabbages
and the sea-kale, basking in the sun, whose heat we feel undiminished
by the influence of any bitter blast, in the prison of these four high
walls, against which the long tree-branches are pinioned. In one place,
the pinioning has failed. Along, flower-laden arm has burst from its
bonds, and is dangling loosely down. There is a ladder against the wall,
set for the gardener to replace it.
"Is it difficult to get up a ladder, Bobby?" ask I, standing still.
"Difficult! Bless your heart, no! Why?"
"One can see nothing here," I answer. "I should like to climb up and sit
on the top of the wall, where one can look about one."
My wish is easy of gratification. Bobby holds the ladder, and I climb
cautiously, rung by rung. Having reached the summit, I sit at ease, with,
my legs loosely dangling. There is no broken glass, there are no painful
bottoms of bottles to disturb my ruminant quiet. The air bites a little,
but I am warmly clad, and young. Bobby sits beside me, whistling and
kicking the bricks with his heels. There is the indistinctness of fine
weather over the chain of low round hills that bound our horizon,
giving them a dignity that, on clearer days, they lack. As I sit, many
small and pleasant noises visit my ears, sometimes distinct, sometimes
mixed together; the brook's noise, as it runs, quick and brown, between
the flat, dry March fields; the gray geese's noise, as they screech all
together from the farm-yard; the church-bells' noise, as they ring out
from the distant town, whose roofs and vanes are shining and glinting
in the morning sun.
"Do you hear the bells?" say I. "Some one has been married this
morning."
"Do not you wish it was you?" asks Bobby, with a brotherly grin.
"I should not mind," reply I, picking out a morsel of mortar with my
finger and thumb. "It is about time for one of us to move off, is not it?
And Barbara has made such a signal failure hitherto, that I think it is

but fair that I should try my little possible."
"All I ask of you is," says Bobby, gravely, "not to take a fellow who
has not got any shooting."
"I will make it a sine qua non," I answer, seriously.
A louder screech than ever from the geese, accompanied with
wing-flappings. How unanimous they are! There is not a voice wanting.
"I wonder how long Sir Roger will stay?" I say presently.
"What connection of ideas made you think of him?" asks Bobby,
curiously.
"Do you suppose that he has any shooting?"
I break into a laugh.
"I do not know, I am sure. I do not think it matters much whether he
has or not."
"I dare say that there are a good many women--old ones, you
know--who would take him, old as he is," says Bobby, with liberality.
"I dare say," I answer. "I do not know. I am not old, but I am not sure
that I would not rather marry him than be an old maid."
A pause. Again I laugh--this time a laugh of recollection.
"What a fool you did look last night!" I say with sisterly candor, "when
you put your head round the schoolroom door, and found that you had
been witty about him to his face!"
Bobby reddens, and aims a bit of mortar at a round-eyed robin that has
perched near us.
"At all events, I did not call him a beast"

"Well, never mind; do not get angry! What did it matter?" say I,
comfortingly. "You did not mention his name. How could he tell that
he was our benefactor? He did not even know that he was to be; and I
begin to have misgivings about it myself."
"I cannot say that I see much sign of his putting his hand into his
breeches-pocket," says Bobby, vulgarly.
There is the click of a lifted latch. We both look in the direction whence
comes the sound. He of whom we speak is entering the garden by a
distant door.
"Get down, Bobby!" cry I, hurriedly, "and help me down. Make haste!
quick! I would not have him find me perched up here for worlds"
Bobby gets down as nimbly as a monkey. I prepare to do likewise.
"Hold it steady!" I cry nervously, and, so saying, begin to turn round
and to stretch out one leg, with the intention of making a graceful
descent backward.
"Stop!" cries Bobby from the bottom, with a diabolical chuckle. "I
think you observed