"_h.e.l.lo-o!_" I shouted. "_h.e.l.lo-o!_" till the wood rang, and then they answered:

"H'lo-o!" but as faint and distant as before.

They had lost their way!

"_Wait!_" I shouted, plunging pell-mell through the bushes. "Wait where you are! I'm coming!"

And so, hallooing all the way, while Robin answered, I made my way to them--and found them resting on a wall.

"h.e.l.lo," I said.

"h.e.l.lo," said Robin. "We aren't mountain-goats, you know, Bertram."

I grinned gleefully.

"I thought my legs were so short?" I said.

"And so they are," he replied, calmly, "but you go a bit too fast, my lad--for Letty."

I had forgotten Let.i.tia! Revenging myself on Robin, it was she alone who had suffered, and my heart smote me as I saw how pale she was, and weary, sitting beside him on the wall. Yet she did not chide me; she said nothing, but sat there resting, with her eyes upon the wild-flower which she plucked to pieces in her hand.

We climbed more slowly and together after that. I was chagrined and angry with myself, and a little jealous that Robin Saxeholm, friend of but a summer-time, should teach me thoughtfulness of dear Let.i.tia. All that steep ascent I felt a strange resentment in my soul, not that Robin was so kind and mindful of her welfare, guiding her gently to where the slope was mildest, but that it was not I who helped her steps. I feigned indifference, but I knew each time he spoke to her and I saw how trustingly she gave her hand.

And I was envious--yes, I confess it--envious of Robin for himself, he was so stalwart; and besides, his coat and trousers set so rarely! They were of some rough, brownish, Scotchy stuff, and interwoven with a fine red stripe just faintly showing through--oh, wondrous fetching! Such ever since has been my ideal pattern, vaguely in mind when I enter tailor-shops, but I never find it. It was woven, I suppose, on some by-gone loom; perhaps at Thrums.

Reaching the summit and drinking in the sweet, clear, skyey airs, with Gra.s.sy Fordshire smiling from all its hills and vales for miles about us, I forgot my pique.

"What about water?" Let.i.tia asked.

I knew a spring.

"I'll go," said Robin. "Where is it, Bertram?"

"Oh no, you won't!" I cried, fiercely. "That's my work, Mr. Bob. You're not the only one who can help Let.i.tia."

He looked astonished for a moment, but laughed good-naturedly and handed me his flask. Let.i.tia smiled at me, and I whistled "Dixie" as I disappeared. I hurried desperately till I lost my breath; I skinned both knees; I wellnigh slipped from a rocky ledge, yet with all my haste I was a full half-hour gone, and got back red and panting.

They had waited patiently. Famished as they were, neither had touched a single mouthful. Let.i.tia said, "Thank you, Bertram," and handed me a slice of the bread and jam. She seemed wondrous busy in our service.

Robin was silent--and I guessed why.

"I didn't mean to be rough," I said.

"Rough?" he asked. "When were you rough, Bertie?"

"About the water."

"Oh," he said, putting his hand upon my shoulder. "I never thought of it, old fellow," and my heart smote me for the second time that day, seeing how much he loved me.

Let.i.tia, weary with our hard climbing, ate so little that Robin chided her, very gently, and I tried banter.

"Wake up! This is a picnic." But they did not rally, so I sprang up restlessly, crying, "It's not like our other good times at all."

"What!" said Robin, striving to be playful. "Only six slices, Bertram?

This is our last holiday. Eat another, lad."

Then I understood that gloom on Sun Dial: he was going to leave us.

Boylike, I had taken it for granted, I suppose, that we would go on climbing and fishing and playing cricket in Gra.s.sy Ford indefinitely. He was to go, he said, on Monday.

"News from home, Mr. Bob?"

He was silent a moment.

"Well, no, Bertie."

"Then why not stay?" I urged. "Stay till September."

He shook his head.

"Eat one more slice for me," I can hear him drawling. "I'll cut it--and a jolly fat one it shall be, Bertram--and Letty here, she'll spread it for you." Here Mr. Bob began to cut--wellnigh a quarter of the loaf he made it. "Lots of the jam, Letty," he said to her. "And you'll eat it, Bertram--and we'll call it--we'll call it the Covenant of the Seventh Slice--never to forget each other. Eh? How's that?"

Now, I did not want the covenant at all, but he was so earnest; and besides, I was afraid Let.i.tia might think that I refused the slice because of the tears she had dropped upon it, spreading the jam.

V

THE HANDMAIDEN

Robin gone, I saw but little of Let.i.tia, I was so busy, I suppose, with youth, and she with age. The poet's lamp had burned up bravely all that summer-time, its flame renewed by Robin's coming--or, rather, it was the brief return of his own young English manhood which he lived again in that fine, clean Devon lad. Robin gone, he felt more keenly how far he was from youth and Devonshire, what a long journey he had come to age and helplessness, and his feeble life burned dimmer than before.

Two or three years slipped by. The charm was gone which had drawn me daily through the hole in our picket-fence. Even the doctor's Rugby tales no longer held me, I knew them so by heart. When he began some old beginning, my mind recited so much more glibly than his faltering tongue, I had leaped to the end before he reached the middle of his story. He was given now to wandering in his narratives, and while he droned there in his chair, my own mind wandered where it listed, or I played restlessly with my cap and tried hard not to yawn, longing to be out-of-doors again. Many a time has my conscience winced, remembering that eagerness to desert one who had been so kind to me, who had led my fancies into pure-aired ways and primrose paths--a little too English and hawthorn-scented, some may think, for a good American, but we meant no treason. He, before Robin, had given my mind an Old-World bent never to be altered. Only last evening, with Master Shallow and a certain well-known portly one of Windsor fame, I drank right merrily and ate a last year's pippin with a dish of caraways in an orchard of ancient Gloucestershire. Before me as I write there hangs a drawing of pretty Sally of the alley and the song. Between the poet and that other younger Devonshire lad, they wellnigh made me an English boy.

We heard from Robin--rather, Let.i.tia did. He never wrote to me, but sent me his love in Let.i.tia's letters and a book from London, _Lorna Doone_, for the Christmas following his return. Let.i.tia told me of him now and then. She knew when he left Cambridge and we sent him a present--or, rather, Let.i.tia did--_Essays of Emerson_, which she bought with money that could be ill-spared, and she wrote an inscription in it, "From Gra.s.sy Fordshire, in memory of the Seventh Slice." She knew when he went back home to Devon, and then, soon afterwards, I believe, when he left England and went out to India. Now, she did not tell me that wonderful piece of news till it was old to her, which was strange, I thought. I remember my surprise. I had been wondering where Robin was and saying to her that he must be in London--perhaps in Parliament!--making his way upward in the world, for I never doubted that he would be an earl some day.

"Oh no," Let.i.tia said, when I mentioned London. "He is in India."

"India! Mr. Bob in India?"

"Yes. He went--why, he went last autumn! Didn't you know?"

No, I did not know. Why, I asked, and as reproachfully as I could make the question--why had she never told me?

She must have forgotten, she replied, penitent--there were so many things to remember.

True, I argued, but she ought at least to have charged her mind with what was to me such important news. Mr. Bob and I were dear, dear friends, I reminded her. He had gone to India, and I had not known!

She knew it, she said, humbly. She would never forgive herself. I did not go near her for days, I remember, and long afterwards her offence still rankled in my mind. Had she not spread that slice on Sun Dial, never to forget? When next I saw her I made a rebuking point of it, asking her if she had heard from Robin. She shook her head. Months pa.s.sed and no letter came.