Innocent | Page 7

both
hands on her breast--"I care more for Roger the horse, and Cupid the
dove, than I do for you! It's quite awful of me--but there it is! I love--I
simply adore"--and she threw out her arms with an embracing
gesture--"all the trees and plants and birds!-- and everything about the
farm and the farmhouse itself--it's just the sweetest home in the world!
There's not a brick or a stone in it that I would not want to kiss if I had
to leave it--but I never felt that way for you! And yet I like you very,
very much, Robin! --I wish I could see you married to some nice girl,
only I don't know one really nice enough."
"Nor do I!" he answered, with a laugh, "except yourself! But never
mind, dear!--we won't talk of it any more, just now at any rate. I'm a
patient sort of chap. I can wait!"
"How long?" she queried, with a wondering glance.

"All my life!" he answered, simply.
A silence fell between them. Some inward touch of embarrassment
troubled the girl, for the colour came and went flatteringly in her soft
cheeks and her eyes drooped under his fervent gaze. The glowing light
of the sky deepened, and the sun began to sink in a mist of bright
orange, which was reflected over all the visible landscape with a warm
and vivid glory. That strange sense of beauty and mystery which thrills
the air with the approach of evening, made all the simple pastoral scene
a dream of incommunicable loveliness,--and the two youthful figures,
throned on their high dais of golden-green hay, might have passed for
the rustic Adam and Eve of some newly created Eden. They were both
very quiet,--with the tense quietness of hearts that are too full for
speech. A joy in the present was shadowed with a dim unconscious fear
of the future in both their thoughts,--though neither of them would have
expressed their feelings in this regard one to the other. A thrush
warbled in a hedge close by, and the doves on the farmhouse gables
spread their white wings to the late sunlight, cooing amorously. And
again the man spoke, with a gentle firmness:
"All my life I shall love you, Innocent! Whatever happens, remember
that! All my life!"
CHAPTER II
The swinging open of a great gate at the further end of the field
disturbed the momentary silence which followed his words. The
returning haymakers appeared on the scene, leading Roger at their head,
and Innocent jumped up eagerly, glad of the interruption.
"Here comes old Roger!" she cried,--"bless his heart! Now, Robin, you
must try to look very stately! Are you going to ride home standing or
sitting?"
He was visibly annoyed at her light indifference.
"Unless I may sit beside you with my arm round your waist, in the
Pettigrew fashion, I'd rather stand!" he retorted. "You said Pettigrew's

hands were always dirty--so are mine. I'd better keep my distance from
you. One can't make hay and remain altogether as clean as a new pin!"
She gave an impatient gesture.
"You always take things up in the wrong way," she said--"I never
thought you a bit like Pettigrew! Your hands are not really dirty!"
"They are!" he answered, obstinately. "Besides, you don't want my arm
round your waist, do you?"
"Certainly not!" she replied, quickly.
"Then I'll stand," he said;--"You shall be enthroned like a queen and I'll
be your bodyguard. Here, wait a minute!"
He piled up the hay in the middle of the load till it made a high cushion
where, in obedience to his gesture, Innocent seated herself. The men
leading the horse were now close about the waggon, and one of them,
grinning sheepishly at the girl, offered her a daintily-made wreath of
wild roses, from which all the thorns had been carefully removed.
"Looks prutty, don't it?" he said.
She accepted it with a smile.
"Is it for me? Oh, Larry, how nice of you! Am I to wear it?"
"If ye loike!" This with another grin.
She set it on her uncovered head and became at once a model for a
Romney; the wild roses with their delicate pink and white against her
brown hair suited the hues of her complexion and the tender grey of her
eyes;--and when, thus adorned, she looked up at her companion, he was
fain to turn away quickly lest his admiration should be too plainly made
manifest before profane witnesses.
Roger, meanwhile, was being harnessed to the waggon. He was a
handsome creature of his kind, and he knew it. As he turned his bright

soft glance from side to side with a conscious pride in himself and his
surroundings, he seemed to be perfectly aware that the knots of bright
red