"I am 'Little Boy Jack' come back to marry you," you began, but something in the wistful, shy girl-tenderness of her face and eyes choked your bantering words right off in your throat.

"Yes, Ladykin," you said, "I have come home, and I am very tired, and I am very sad, and I am very lonesome, and I have not been a very good boy. But please be good to me! I am so lonesome I cannot wait to make love to you. Oh, _please_, _please_ love me _n-o-w_. I _need_ you to love me N-O-W!"

Ladykin frowned. It was not a cross frown. It was just a sort of a cosy corner for her thoughts. Surprise cuddled there, and a sorry feeling, and a great tenderness.

"You have not been a very good boy?" she repeated after you.

The memory of a year crowded blackly upon you. "No," you said, "I have not been a very good boy, and I am very suffering-sad. But _please_ love me, and forgive me. No one has ever loved me!"

The surprise and the sorry feeling in Ladykin's forehead crowded together to make room for something that was just _womanliness_. She began to smile. It was the smile of a hurt person when the opiate first begins to overtake the pain.

"Oh, I'm sure it was an accidental badness," she volunteered softly. "If I were accidentally bad, you would forgive _me_, wouldn't you?"

"Oh, yes, yes, yes," you stammered, and reached up your lonesome hands to her.

"Then you don't have to make love," she whispered. "It's all made," and slipped down into your arms.

But something troubled her, and after a minute she pushed you away and tried to renounce you.

"But it is not Thursday," she sobbed; "it is Wednesday; and my name is not 'Clarice'; it is Ladykin."

Then all the boyishness died out of you--the sweet, idle reveries, the mystic responsibilities. You shook your Father's dream from your eyes, and squared your shoulders for your own realities.

"A Man must make his own Happy-Day," you cried, "and a Man must choose his own Mate!"

Before your vehemence Ladykin winced back against the rock and eyed you fearsomely.

"Oh, I will love you and cherish you," you pleaded.

But Ladykin shook her head. "That is not enough," she whispered. There was a kind of holy scorn in her eyes.

Then a White Gull flashed like an apparition before your sight.

Ladykin's whole figure drooped, her cheek paled, her little mouth quivered, her vision narrowed. There with her eyes on the White Gull and your eyes fixed on hers, you saw her shy thoughts journey into the Future. You saw her eyes smile, sadden, brim with tears, smile again, and come homing back to you with a timid, glad surprise as she realized that your thoughts too had gone all the long journey with her.

She reached out one little hand to you. It was very cold.

"If I should pa.s.s like the flash of a white wing," she questioned, "would you be true to me--and _mine_?"

The Past, the Present, the Future rushed over you in tumult. Your lips could hardly crowd so big a vow into so small a word. "Oh, YES, YES, YES!" you cried.

In reverent mastery you raised her face to yours. "A Man must make his own Happy-Day," you repeated. "A Man must make his own Happy-Day!"

Timorously, yet a.s.sentingly, she came back to your arms. The whisper of her lips against your ear was like the flutter of a rose petal.

"It will be Wednesday, then," she said, "for us and--ours."

Clanging a strident bell across the magic stillness of the garden, Sam bore down upon you like a steam-engine out of tune.

"Oh, I say," he shouted, "for heaven's sake cut it out and come to supper."

The startled impulse of your refusal faded before the mute appeal in Ladykin's eyes.

"All right," you answered; "but first I must go and cable 'love' to my Father."

"Oh, hurry!" cried Ladykin. Her word was crumpled and shy as a kiss.

"Oh, hurry!" cried Sam. His thought was straight and frank as a knife and fork.

Joy sang in your heart like a prayer that rhymed. Your eager heart was pounding like a race horse. The clouds in the sky were scudding to sunset. The surf on the beach seemed all out of breath. The green meadow path to the village stretched like the paltriest trifle before a man's fleet running pace.

"But I can't hurry," you said, for Bruno-Clarice came poking his grizzled old nose into your hand. "Oh, wait for me," he seemed to plead.

"Oh, please, _please_ wait for me."

THE RUNAWAY ROAD

THE Road ran spitefully up a steep, hot, rocky, utterly shadeless hill, and then at the top turned suddenly in a flirty little green loop, and looked back, and called "Follow me!"

Wouldn't you have considered that a dare?

The Girl and the White Pony certainly took it as such, and proceeded at once to "follow," though the White Pony stumbled clatteringly on the rolling stones, and the Girl had to cling for dear life to the rocking pommels of her saddle.

It was a cruel climb, puff--pant--scramble--dust--glare--every step of the way, but when the two adventurers really reached the summit at last, a great dark chestnut-tree loomed up for shade, every sweet-smelling breeze in the world was there to welcome them, and the whole green valley below stretched out before them in the shining, woodsy wonder of high noon and high June.

You know, yourself, just how the world looks and feels and smells at high noon of a high June!

Even a pony stands majestically on the summit of a high hill--neck arched, eyes rolling, mane blowing, nostrils quivering. Even a girl feels a tug of power at her heart.

And still the Road cried "Follow me!" though it never turned its head again in doubt or coquetry. It was a kind-looking Road now, all gracious and sweet and tender, with rustly green overhead, and soft green underfoot, and the pleasant, buzzing drone of bees along its clovered edges.

"We might just as well follow it and see," argued the Girl, and the White Pony took the suggestion with a wild leap and cantered eagerly along the desired way.

It was such an extraordinarily lonesome Road that you could scarcely blame it for picking up companionship as best it might. There was stretch after stretch of pasture, and stretch after stretch of woodland, and stretch after stretch of black-stumped clearing--with never a house to cheer it, or a human echo to break its ghostly stillness. Yet with all its isolation and remoteness the landscape had that certain vibrant, vivid air of self-consciousness that thrills you with an uncanny sense of an invisible presence--somewhere. It's just a trick of June!

Tramps, pirates, even cannibals, seemed deliciously imminent. The Girl remembered reading once of a lonely woman bicyclist who met a runaway circus elephant at the turn of a country road. Twelve miles from home is a long way off to have anything happen.

Her heart began to quicken with the joyous sort of fear that is one of the prime sweets of youth. It's only when fear reaches your head that it hurts. The loneliness, the mystery, the uncertainty, were tonic to her.

The color spotted in her cheeks. Her eyes narrowed defensively to every startling detail of woods or turf. Her ears rang with the sudden, new acuteness of her hearing. She felt as though she and the White Pony were stalking right across the heartstrings of the earth. Once the White Pony caught his foot and sent a scared sob into her throat.

Oh, everything was magic! A little brown rabbit reared up in the Road as big as a kangaroo, and beckoned her with his ears. A red-winged blackbird bulky as an eagle trumpeted a swamp-secret to her as he pa.s.sed. A tiny chipmunk in the wall loomed like a lion in his lair, and sent a huge rock crashing like an avalanche into the field. The whole green and blue world seemed tingling with toy noises, made suddenly big.

The White Pony's mouth was frothing with the curb. The White Pony's coat was reeking wet with noon and nervousness, but the Girl sat tense and smiling and important in her saddle, as though just once for all time she was the only italicized word in the Book of Life.

"It's just the kind of a road that I like to travel alone," she gasped, a little breathlessly, "but if I were engaged and my man let me do it, I should consider him--careless."