not come. What an exquisite, waggish, obstinate and altogether adorable little head it was. Yet it would not lie on his shoulder.
“Come down, chickadee,” he said, longingly.
“Come up, Mr. Owl,” she replied, teasingly.
She was daring him. Both his powerful arms went up to her perch; and, lifting her down, he seated himself on the rustic bench underneath, and smoothed back the fluffy auburn hair from her white forehead.
She sat on his knee with her red lips firmly pressed together. She would not open them. She was obdurate to his appeals for a word, a smile, a caress.
“Go back, then, you obstinate parrot,” he said; and, irritably restoring her to her former position, he stretched himself against the back of the seat, and propped his head on his hand.
She drew aside one of the willow’s pendant arms. “This—at seven o’clock in the morning! I am shocked.”
“I have been up all night,” he replied, sleepily.
“All night—then you were after no good.”
“No, no good,” he said, uncovering an eye to look at her. “I was drawing out a new will, arranging papers, etc., preparatory to—”
“Suicide?” she asked, in an interested way.
“No, not suicide, matrimony. To-morrow morning at six of the clock I shall cease to be a free man.”
The girl looked him all over; she observed curiously the effect of the little flecks of light playing from his dusty walking shoes up to his dark, smooth face with its heavy black moustache. Then she said, hastily, “I shall not marry you to-morrow, Mr. Owl.”
“I did not ask you to, Miss Parrot,” he said, disagreeably.
The girl resumed her swinging, her eyes this time fixed on the green meadows and the pretty village. For a long time she ignored the presence of her lover as completely as she did that of the huge black watch-dog loitering about the trunk of the tree in expectation of her descent and preparation of his breakfast.
However, she was singing of him, although she did not address him, and as she sang the man’s gloomy expression changed to one of complacence, for he was again her theme.
“ ‘I remember the black wharves and the slips,
And the sea-tides tossing free,
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.’ ”
He knew what she was thinking of. Her busy young brain was occupied with its favourite problem, namely, himself. Ever since childhood she had been told that some mysterious link bound her to him; that every particle of food she ate, every scrap of clothing she wore, came from him; that, in short, she belonged to him, and, according to some secret and to her unknown arrangement, her marriage to him was a predetermined, foreordained thing; that if she refused to submit, she might fall victim to some threatening evil, some shadowy calamity. And now he knew that he had puzzled her, for in the face of all this past instruction he had just made her think he was about to marry some other woman.
“What are you crying about, birdie?” he asked, suddenly.
Big tear-drops were quietly rolling down her cheeks and over her white dress; but, without making any effort to wipe them away, she was singing more unconcernedly than ever. This time, however, a different tune and different words.
“ ‘He sighed her to death with his sighs so deep,
He drugged her asleep with his bad black eyes,
He tangled her up in his stories steep,
And made her think of him marriagewise.’ ”
“The dickens! What are you reciting, you little recluse?” he inquired, with pardonable brusqueness.
“Something I made up after reading in a book about a deceitful man who inveigled a poor woman into marriage with him,” she replied, not meeting his eyes, and keeping her own fixed on a distant church steeple.
“What are you crying about, birdie?” he repeated again, this time in the softest and gentlest of tones.
“Am I crying?” she asked, innocently brushing a hand over her cheek. “It must be for that poor creature who has to be your wife.”
“Has to be—she has promised me fifty times over;” and, forgetting his fatigue, he sprang up, and once more laid a hand on the swinging limb.
The girl tried to start it. It would not move, and she exclaimed, imperiously, “Please take your hand off my horse’s bridle.”
The horse was still detained, and, refusing to meet the steady glance of his eyes, she gazed away out over the meadows, and sang, waggishly:
“ ‘I’ll not marry you, kind sir, she said, sir, she said, sir, she said,
I’ll not marry you, kind sir, she said,
Because you are too lordly.’ ”
“Lordly,” he muttered, “I am your slave. Look here,” and he cautiously lifted a damp curl from her forehead. “You are bathed in perspiration. So much for being a woman, for jumping at conclusions, and landing in a paroxysm of jealousy.”
The girl was forced to call in her wandering gaze. He would stand there until doomsday if she did not; and, with a provoking uplift of her light brows, she looked down into the two black penetrating eyes that pierced her face like lances.
“It was jealousy,” he said, with satisfaction. “You thought for an instant that I was speaking of some other woman.”
“I was not jealous. I was glad.”
“Yes, you were,” he said, doggedly, “and I am glad you were—and listen. Circumstances have arisen that make it necessary for me to give you the protection of my name. You trust me fully—”
“Not that far!” she exclaimed, measuring off an inch on one of her pink fingers.
He laughed, seized the finger, and carried it to his lips. “I cannot explain, but we must be married at once. It will only be an empty ceremony. You are not ready yet to bow your wilful young neck under the yoke of matrimony.”
“I shall not have a phantom marriage,” she said, indignantly. “Go away, you bad sea-dog.”
“Then let it be a real one,” he said, eagerly. “Give up your will to me. Stop being a wilful spoiled child of a fiancée, and become a loving, sensible little wife. You can if you want to. There is nothing but the frail barrier of your will between us. Sometimes I think I would like to break it, but—” suddenly pausing. “What a fool I am! One might as well rhapsodise to a marble statue as to you, icy, passionless child that you are. Perhaps when you get away from your present dead-and-alive surroundings—”
“Perhaps
