"I think Persians worship the sun," said Boodles doubtfully.

"Aw, bain't 'em dafty?" said Mary scornfully, though she too was a sun-worshipper without being aware of it.

"Her will be a canister tu," said Peter lugubriously.

"What be that?" asked Mary, who did not profess to know things.

"Her will et she, and then mebbe her will come on and et we," explained Peter, with needless apprehension, as the most ravenous cannibal would certainly have turned vegetarian before feasting upon him.

Boodles was always rude enough to correct Peter's most obvious errors, though he was so much older than herself, and she did so then, with the usual result that he went away muttering for his dictionary. He looked up cannon-ball, and of course discovered that he had been quite right and she was hopelessly in the wrong. Then he looked up canister, and found that it was a box for holding tea; and when he turned to tea he discovered it was sometimes made of beef, and beef was meat, and meat is what human beings are composed of; and canister was, therefore, a box for containing meat. He had been perfectly right, and the presumption of young maids was intolerable.

When Boodles got back to the village she saw the people standing about the street in groups as if they were expecting some one of importance to pa.s.s that way. She looked about but could see nothing; the people were almost silent; they did not laugh and spoke only in whispers. She felt as if some calamity was impending, so she hurried indoors and kept away from the windows, as it was rather a bright day for her and she did not want it spoilt; but presently a rumbling sound made her look out, and soon she was shuddering. A black closed vehicle, like a hea.r.s.e, pa.s.sed, drawn by two horses; and white-faced grey-haired Annie was seated beside the driver; and then Boodles knew what the people were standing about for. It was to see the vehicle go through on its way down to the workhouse infirmary. Boodles went very white, drew back, and hid her face in her hands. She thought Annie had turned her head and seen her at the window.

"Those flames will haunt me all my life," she whispered. "I shall see them jumping about my bed, and hear them roaring--but it wasn't my fault. He must have been a brute. How awful it would have been for me if he had died there."

Had she known all the evil that Pendoggat had done she would have felt less guilty and less sorry. She could only comfort herself with the knowledge that it had been Annie rather than herself who had started those terrible and uncontrollable flames. She would not be troubled with either of them again, apart from memory, for the workhouse had received them; one would remain there, crippled and blind, the other would doubtless go on into the world, and try to earn a livelihood for a few years before returning there again in the twilight of her days.

That night there was moonlight but no wind, and Boodles awoke in horror, fancying she heard for the second time that rumbling beneath her window, and screamed when she found and felt her body enveloped in flames. She sprang up to discover that she had been frightened by her own glowing hair. She was so sleepy before tumbling into bed that she had neglected to plait it, and it was all over the sheets like fire. "I shall always get these horrors while I am alone," she cried; and then she thought again of the wonderful letter, and the foreign girl with the amazing name whom she was to meet at the gate of the wood on Friday morning, and an intense longing for that strange girl came over her, and she cried aloud to the pale and equally lonely moon: "I hope she is nice. I will pray for her to be nice. The very first thing I shall ask her will be if I may sleep with her."

Friday, day of regeneration, came clothed in a white mist, and found the girl asking herself: "Shall I try and make myself look older?" She peeped out, saw the moor shining, and thought she would be natural, and go out upon it young and fresh; dressed in white to suit the mist, like a little bride; and, having decided, she was soon trying to make herself look as sweet as possible. When she had finished, slanting the bedroom gla.s.s to take in as much of the picture as it would, she was fairly well satisfied, and was just beginning to sing the old song, "I'm only a baby," when she stopped herself severely with the rebuke that she was only a common person trying to let lodgings.

All the spring flowers lifted up their heads and laughed at the lodging-house keeper when she appeared among them--they were really spring flowers that morning--and the real sun smiled, and real singing-birds mocked the little girl in white as she tripped towards the woods, because it appeared to them quite ridiculous that Boodles should relinquish her claims to childhood. The book of fairy-tales had been shut up and put away, thought she; but somehow the young spring things about her would not admit that.

Everything in the woods was wide awake and laughing; not crying any more, and saying, lisping, murmuring, whispering: "Here's the happy-ever-after little girl." It was the proper ending of the story, the ending that the G.o.ds had written in their ma.n.u.script and the compositor-ogres had tried to mar in their wicked way. How could any story end unhappily on such a morning? The yellow patches in the woods were not artificial blobs of colour but real primroses, and the blue patches were bluebells, and the white patches were wind-flowers with warm mist hanging to them; and Boodles was not a mere girl any longer, but the presiding fairy of them all going out to find another fairy to play with. It was not the best ending perhaps, but it was the second best. So she went down to the woods and met another fairy, and they played together happily ever after. The furze, in genial generous mood, showered its blossoms at her feet and said: "Here is gold for you, fairy girl." The Tavy roared on cheerily, and a little cataract said to a conceited whirlpool too young to know how giddy it was: "Isn't that the G.o.ddess Flora crossing by the stepping-stones?" And the flowers said: "We are going to have a fine day." Boodles was ascending in the romantic scale. She had started as a lodging-house keeper; then she had become quite a young girl; from that to the fairy stage was only one step; and then at a single bound she became the G.o.ddess of flowers; and she went along "our walk" with sunshine for hair, and wind-flowers for eyes, and primroses for skin; and the world seemed very sweet and fresh as if the wonderful work of creation had only been finished that morning at nine o'clock punctually, and Boodles was just going through to see that the gardener had done his work properly.

Life at eighteen is glorious and imaginative; sorrows cannot quench its flame. One hour of real happiness makes the young soul sing again, as one burst of sunshine purges a haunted house of all its horror. Boodles was down by Tavy side to bathe in the flowers and wash off the past and the beastly origin of things; the black time of winter, the awful loneliness, the windy nights. She was going to meet a friend, a companion, somebody who would frighten the dark hours away. The past was to vanish, not as if it had never been, but because it really never had been. The story was to begin all over again, as the other one had been conceived so badly that n.o.body could stand it. The once upon a time stage had come again, and the ogres had agreed not to interfere this time. Boodles baptised herself in dew, and rose from the ceremony only a few hours old. The child's name was Flora; no connection of the poor little thing which had been flung out to perish because n.o.body wanted it except silly old Weevil, who hated to see animals hurt. Weevil belonged to the other story too, the rejected story, and therefore he had never existed. n.o.body had wanted Boodles, which was natural enough, as she was merely a wretched illegitimate brat; but every one wanted Flora. The world would be a dreary place without its flowers. Flora could laugh Mr.

Bellamie to scorn; for the sun was her father and the warm earth her mother; and n.o.body would stop to look at the flowers while she was going by with them all upon her face.

At last Boodles looked up. She had been sitting on the warm peat just outside the gate until all Nature struck eleven; and the warmth and fragrance of the wood had made her sleepy. Dreams are the natural accompaniment of sleep, and she was dreaming then; for the expected figure was close to her, the figure in grey flannel and a plain straw hat; not elderly certainly, not much older than herself; and it was true enough she would have liked that figure if it had only been real.

"Go away," she murmured, rather frightened. "Please go away."

There was something dreadfully wrong. It was a nice girl's face that she saw, at least she had often called it so, and it was not black, and the owner of that face was a.s.suredly going to like her very much indeed, although it was hardly a case of love at first sight; for the girl had failed to keep her appointment, the foreign girl with the amazing name was not there, the Persian girl who was to adore the sun and the coals of Lewside Cottage was evidently a deceiver of the baser sort. She had not come, and instead she had sent some one who could not fail to recognise the little girl waiting at the gate of the wood, who was calling her fond names, and actually kissing her, just as if the story was going to end, not in the second best way, but in the most blissful manner possible, with a dance of fairies on Tavy banks and a wedding-march. It was Aubrey who had come to the gate of the wood.

"I wish you wouldn't," said Boodles rather sleepily. "I am waiting here for a girl."

Then something appeared before her eyes which woke her up; the letter which she had written to Devonport; and she heard a voice saying very close to her ear, so close indeed that the lips were touching it--

"I wrote it, darling. I was afraid you would not come unless I deceived you a little. But I signed it with my own name."

"Yerbua Eimalleb--what nonsense!" she sighed.

"It is only Aubrey Bellamie written backwards."

"Oh, you must not. How could you? It made me so happy. I thought at last I should have a friend, to drive the loneliness away--and now, it is all dark again and miserable. You are sending me back to the creeping, crawling shadows."

"I have given up the Navy. I have given up my people, and everything, for the one thing, the best thing, for you," Aubrey said.

Boodles put her head down, as if the wind had snapped her slender neck, and he kissed the hair just as he had done at different periods of her life, when she was a very small girl and the radiance was hanging down, and when she was rather a bigger girl and the radiance was up--and now.

It was the best kiss of all, a man's kiss, the kiss which regenerated her and renounced all else.

"You don't know what you are saying. I am an illegitimate child. You must not give up anything for me."

Boodles had forgotten that it was the beginning of a new story. His great act of renunciation staggered her. Everything, birth, name, prospects, respectability, for her. She could not let him, but how was she to resist? She threw the sleep off, and said almost fiercely--

"You must not. The time may come when you will be sorry. I shall be a weight upon you, dragging you down. You might become ashamed of me."

"Darling, I have been true to you all my life. I will be true for the rest of it."

"I promised your parents I would not."

"You promised me, year after year, that you would."

Boodles tried to smile. She would have to be false to some one.

"I have left my father's house, and I am not going back," Aubrey went on.

"It will be terrible for them," she murmured.

"It would be worse for you and for me. They have known nothing but happiness all their lives. It is their turn to have a little trouble.

They are bringing it upon themselves. I have told them I shall not go back until they are willing to receive my wife."

"They will never do that. Oh, Aubrey, you must not marry me. I shall spoil your life."

"If I lost you it would be spoilt. I am being selfish after all," he said. "And if you were left alone what would you do?"

Boodles said nothing, but the Tavy went roaring by, answering the question for her.

"I am going to take you away, darling." He was holding her tightly, and she did not resist much, perhaps because she felt she ought to give up a little to him as he was giving up so much for her. "We will be married at once, and live in a tiny home. I have got it already, at Carbis Bay, looking over St. Ives at the sea, a lovely place where the sun shines.

We will have our own boat and go fishing--"

"And drown ourselves sometimes," added happy Boodles.

"Not till we quarrel, and that will be never."

"Look, Aubrey!" she cried, lifting herself, pointing between the bars of the gate into the wood. "There is our walk in a blue mist."

The atmosphere of the wood was the colour of bluebells, which stretched in a magic carpet as far as they could see.

"Let us go in," he said.

"Not yet. Not unless I--Oh, Aubrey, if we go in it will be all over. Do I deserve it? Those winter evenings, the loneliness, the winds," she murmured.

"It is all over," he said firmly, with a man's seriousness. "We have to start life now, for I have n.o.body but you--my little sweetheart, my wife of the radiant head, and the golden skin--"

"And the freckles," she said, looking down, without a smile.