Part 1 (2/2)
”What?” asks Philip, still feasting his eyes on the girl's fair physique, and un.o.bservant of the gathering darkness overhead.
”Why, the rain, of course. We shall get wet.”
”Only a summer shower.”
”Yes, but as disastrous in its effects as any other downpour. I shall make for that barn in the next field; the children have all mysteriously vanished.”
”I am dreadfully afraid of the wet,” declares Philip, pretending to s.h.i.+ver. ”May I accompany you?”
He is still retaining her hand as they run together towards the haven of ”shelter.
”How nice of it to rain!” he gasps, applauding the accommodating skies.
”Let me make you comfortable,” heaping together a pile of hay for her to sit upon. ”Now tell me all about yourself.”
Eleanor sinks down on the soft couch, looking somewhat wistfully through the open door of the barn.
”I am easily explained. I live here always. My father is a farmer, and I feed the chickens, dust the house, and teach in the Sunday-school. Only fancy what an exciting life, Mr. Roche. Doesn't it take your breath away?”
At the thought of her own humdrum existence Eleanor laughs again with a return of that superabundant vitality which is hers by nature.
”Then once or perhaps twice a year I am invited to tea at the Vicarage, and I sit up straight in a high-backed chair and say 'Yes' and 'No'
when I am spoken to, and answer prettily--like a schoolgirl. The vicar's wife would have a fit if I lounged like this,” flinging herself back with an air of abandon on the hay. ”Once she asked me to sing (I play the harmonium in church). My cousin Joe had brought me a comic song from town, and I couldn't help, for the life of me, getting up and giving her a verse.”
”Of course it was wrong, and she looked frightfully shocked. I have certainly never been invited to tea since. Oh, how I should like to sing at concerts and halls--I mean the sort of places where you have an eyegla.s.s, and walk round with a hat and stick!”
Her face beamed as she delivered this sentence--involuntarily the little hands clasped themselves together in excitement.
”Be thankful that such an ambition is ungratified,” declares Philip, speaking seriously for the first time. ”You do not know the fate that you are coveting. Best contented, child, to remain your own sweet self. Your country life is ideal compared with--_that_!”
Eleanor shakes her head.
”It doesn't seem like it,” she declares.
”No, I dare say not. Duty is sometimes heroism in its n.o.blest form.”
”Then are all the people wicked that go to London, and sing, act, and enjoy themselves?”
”Indeed I trust not. We should have a pretty bad time of it if they were. Yet I don't know that you're far wrong. Few are guileless. But why talk of it? Time enough to warn you of the pitfalls when you are on your road to the great city.”
”What is your life?” asks Eleanor curiously, drawing the long ends of hay through her teeth with a meditative smile.
”Scarcely less monotonous than yours, Miss Grebby”--an amused look in his eyes. ”Instead of feeding chickens I feed my friends--lunches, dinners, midnight suppers--all of which pall terribly after a time.
Instead of dusting my house I leave it to acc.u.mulate dust, while I wander abroad. A home is a dull place for one man.”
”You have no wife or mother?”
<script>