silly refrain. I meet Bobby. I also meet Vick, my little shivering, smooth, white terrier. They both join me. The one wriggles herself into the shape of a trembling comma, and, foolishly chasing herself, rolls over on her back, to demonstrate her joy at 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. A long, 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 school-room 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 just now that I looked a fool last night! perhaps you will not mind trying how it feels!"
So saying, he seizes the ladder—a light and short one—and makes off with it. I cry, "Bobby! Bobby!" suppressedly, several times, but I need hardly say that my appeal is addressed to deaf ears. I remain sitting on the wall-top, trying to look as if I did not mind, while grave misgivings possess my soul as to the extent of strong boot and ankle that my unusual situation leaves visible. Once the desperate idea of jumping presents itself to my mind, but the ground looks so distant, and the height so great, that my heart fails me.
From my watch-tower I trace the progress of Sir Roger between the fruit-trees. As yet, he has not seen me. Perhaps he will turn into another walk, and leave the garden by an opposite door, I remaining undiscovered. No! he is coming toward me. He is walking slowly along, a cigar in his mouth, and his eyes on the ground, evidently in deep meditation. Perhaps he will pass me without looking up. Nearer and nearer he comes, I hold my breath, and sit as still as stone, when, as ill-luck will have it, just as he is approaching quite close to me, utterly innocent of my proximity, a nasty, teasing tickle visits my nose, and I sneeze loudly and irrepressibly. Atcha! atcha! He starts, and not perceiving at first whence comes the unexpected sound, looks about him in a bewildered way. Then his eyes turn toward the wall. Hope and fear are alike at an end. I am discovered. Like Angelina, I—
. … "stand confessed,
A maid in all my charms."
"How—on—earth—did you get up there?" he asks, in an accent of slow and marked astonishment, not unmixed with admiration.
As he speaks, he throws away his cigar, and takes his hat off.
"How on earth am I to get down again? is more to the purpose," I answer, bluntly.
"I could not have believed that any thing but a cat could have been so agile," he says, beginning to laugh. "Would you mind telling me how did you get up?"
"By the ladder," reply I, laconically, reddening, and, under the influence of that same insupportable doubt concerning my ankles, trying to tuck away my legs under me, a manœuvre which all but succeeds in toppling me over.
"The ladder!" (looking round). "Are you quite sure? Then where has it disappeared to?"
"I said something that vexed Bobby," reply I, driven to the humiliating explanation, "and he went off with it. Never mind! once I am down, I will be even with him!"
