“He wouldn’t dare,” says Margaret,
to no one in particular. “Oh, no, he wouldn’t
dare after what happened four years ago.”
And, Margaret-like, she has quite forgotten that what
happened four years ago was all caused by her having
flirted outrageously with Teddy Anstruther, in order
to see what Billy would do.
The twelve forty-five, for a wonder, was on time;
and there descended from it a big, blond young man,
who did not look in the least like a fortune-hunter.
Miss Hugonin resented this. Manifestly, he looked
clean and honest for the deliberate purpose of deceiving
her. Very well! She’d show him!
He was quite unembarrassed. He shook hands cordially;
then he shook hands with the groom, who, you may believe
it, was grinning in a most unprofessional manner because
Master Billy was back again at Selwoode. Subsequently,
in his old decisive way, he announced they would walk
to the house, as his legs needed stretching.
The insolence of it!—quite as if he had
something to say to Margaret in private and couldn’t
wait a minute. Beyond doubt, this was a young
man who must be taken down a peg or two, and that at
once. Of course, she wasn’t going to walk
back with him!—a pretty figure they’d
cut strolling through the fields, like a house-girl
and the milkman on a Sunday afternoon! She would
simply say she was too tired to walk, and that would
end the matter.
So she said she thought the exercise would do them
both good.
They came presently with desultory chat to a meadow
bravely decked in all the gauds of Spring. About
them the day was clear, the air bland. Spring
had revamped her ageless fripperies of tender leaves
and bird-cries and sweet, warm odours for the adornment
of this meadow; above it she had set a turkis sky
splashed here and there with little clouds that were
like whipped cream; and upon it she had scattered
largesse, a Danae’s shower of buttercups.
Altogether, she had made of it a particularly dangerous
meadow for a man and a maid to frequent.
Yet there Mr. Woods paused under a burgeoning maple—paused
resolutely, with the lures of Spring thick about him,
compassed with every snare of scent and sound and
colour that the witch is mistress of.
Margaret hoped he had a pleasant passage over.
Her father, thank you, was in the pink of condition.
Oh, yes, she was quite well. She hoped Mr. Woods
would not find America—
“Well, Peggy,” said Mr. Woods, “then,
we’ll have it out right here.”
His insolence was so surprising that—in
order to recover herself—Margaret actually
sat down under the maple-tree. Peggy, indeed!
Why, she hadn’t been called Peggy for—no,
not for four whole years!
“Because I intend to be friends, you know,”
said Mr. Woods.
And about them the maple-leaves made a little island
of sombre green, around which more vivid grasses rippled
and dimpled under the fitful spring breezes.
And everywhere leaves lisped to one another, and birds
shrilled insistently. It was a perilous locality.
