The Lovely Lady | Page 2

passages, perhaps, which could be taken home and made over into the
groundwork of new and interesting adventures in the House from
which Ellen had recalled him. There was a girl with June apple cheeks
and bright brown eyes at that picnic, who could have given points to
princesses.
He followed the tapping of his sister's crutch along the thick, bitter
smelling dust of the road, rising more and more heavily as the dew
gathered, until they came to the turn by the cluster rose and heard
below them on the bridge, the din of the wheels and the gay laughter of

the picnickers.
"Hi, Peter!"
"Hello, Ellen!"
"Awful sorry you couldn't come ... had a bully time.... Killed a
copperhead and two water snakes."
"Here, Ellen, catch ahold of this!"
And while she was about it the June apple girl leaned over the
end-board of the wagon, and spoke softly to Peter.
"We're going over to Harvey's pasture next Wednesday afternoon,
berrying, in the Democrat wagon with our team; Jim Harvey's going to
drive. We made it up to-day. Surely you can get away for an
afternoon?" That was what the voice said. "To be with me," the eyes
added.
"I don't know.... I'd like it...."
It was not altogether the calculation as to how much earlier he would
have to get up that morning to be able to take an hour off in the
afternoon, that made Peter hesitate, but the sudden swimming of his
senses about the point of meeting eyes. "I'll tell you what," he said,
"you come by for Ellen, and I'll walk over about four and ride home
with you."
"Oh," said the girl; she did not know quite whether to triumph at having
gained so much or to be disappointed at so little. "I'll be expecting
you."
The horses creaked forward in the harness, the dust puffed up from
under the wheels and drowned the smell of the wilding rose, it fell thick
on the petals and a little on Peter's spirit, too, as he followed Ellen back
to the house, though it never occurred to him to think any more of it
than that he had been working too long in the hot sun and was very

tired. It did not, however, prevent his eating his share of the picnic
dainties as he sat with his mother and Ellen on the veranda. Then as the
soft flitter of the bats' wings began in the dusk, he kissed them both and
went early up to bed.
Peter's room was close under the roof and that was close under the elm
boughs; all hours he could hear them finger it with soft rustling touches.
The bed was pulled to the window that gave upon the downslope of the
hill; at the foot of it one saw the white bloom-faces of the alders lift and
bow above the folded leaves, and the rising of the river damp across the
pastures. All the light reflected from the sky above Bloombury wood
was no more than enough to make a glimmer on the glass of a picture
that hung at the foot of Peter's bed. It served to show the gilt of the
narrow frame and the soft black of the print upon which Peter had
looked so many times that he thought now he was still seeing it as he
lay staring in the dusk--a picture of a young man in bright armour with
loosened hair, riding down a particularly lumpy and swollen dragon.
Flames came out of the creature's mouth in the immemorial fashion of
dragons, but the young man was not hurt by them. He sat there lightly,
his horse curvetting, his lance thrust down the dragon's throat and
coming out of the back of his head, doing a great deed easily, the way
people like to think of great things being done. It was a very narrow
picture, so narrow that you might think that it had something to do with
the dragon's doubling on himself and the charger's forefeet being up in
the air to keep within the limits of the frame, and the exclusion from it
of the Princess whom, as his father had told him the story, the young
knight George had rescued from those devouring jaws. It came out now,
quite clearly, that she must have had cheeks as red as June apples and
eyes like the pools of spring rain in Bloombury wood, and her not
being there in the picture was only a greater security for her awaiting
him at this moment in the House with the Shining Walls.
There was, for the boy still staring at it through the dusk, something
particularly personal in the picture, for ever since his father had died,
three years ago, Peter had