How I loved her as I put my hand upon her firm little shoulders, while I extricated first one crutch and then another, and at last got upon the hard path again!

When she had landed me safely, she returned to the strawberry-bed, and began busily gathering the fruit, which she brought to me in her sunburnt hands, stained to a bright pink by the ripe fruit.  Such a charm did she throw over me, that at last I actually consented to her putting the fruit into my mouth.

She then told me with much gravity that she knew how to ’cure crutches.’  There was, she said, a famous ‘crutches-well’ in Wales, kept by St. Winifred (most likely an aunt of hers, being of the same name), whose water could ‘cure crutches.’  When she came from Wales again she would be sure to bring a bottle of ‘crutches-water.’  She told me also much about Snowdon (near which she lived), and how, on misty days, she used to ’make believe that she was the Lady of the Mist, and that she was going to visit the Tywysog o’r Niwl, the Prince of the Mist; it was so nice!’

I do not know how long we kept at this, but the organist returned and caught her in the very act of feeding me.  To be caught in this ridiculous position, even by a drunken man, was more than I could bear, however, and I turned and left.

As I recall that walk home along Wilderness Road.  I live it as thoroughly as I did then.  I can see the rim of the sinking sun burning fiery red low down between the trees on the left, and then suddenly dropping out of sight.  I can see on the right the lustre of the high-tide sea.  I can hear the ‘che-eu-chew, che-eu-chew.’ of the wood-pigeons in Graylingham Wood.  I can smell the very scent of the bean flowers drinking in the evening dews.  I did not feel that I was going home as the sharp gables of the Hall gleamed through the chestnut-trees.  My home for evermore was the breast of that lovely child, between whom and myself such a strange delicious sympathy had sprung up.  I felt there was no other home for me.

‘Why, child, where have you been?’ said my mother, as she saw me trying to slip to bed unobserved, in order that happiness such as mine might not he brought into coarse contact with servants.  ’Child, where have you been, and what has possessed you?  Your face is positively shining with joy, and your eyes, they alarm me, they are so unnaturally bright.  I hope you are not going to have an illness.’

I did not tell her, but went to my room, which now was on the ground floor, and sat watching the rooks sailing home in the sunset till the last one had gone, and the voices of the blackbirds grew less clamorous, and the trees began to look larger and larger in the dusk.

IV