The stars shone steadily: she lifted her eyes to them and was comforted, for they smiled on her as the eyes of her lover. But one fell down the sky as she looked—fell from its triumphant height, away into the darkness below the edge of the world. She turned another corner, and was lost in the deeper shadow of the wood.
A merry April day drew to its close. The buds on the elms had burst from pink to green, the almond-blossom was at the rosiest of its bloom, the daffodils along the garden-walk were crowning themselves with gold, the blue-bells began to colour the brown earth in the graveyard of the very leaves that had fluttered softly upon a pair of young lovers in October last.
The sun had just set, and a line of ruddy light glowed behind the still sparsely-clad trees of that same wood when Charley Chiswick stepped from the train into the little station below the hill.
He fancied that the porter stared at him strangely, and that two labourers who met him on the platform grinned as he passed, but he only nodded to the one and passed the others by, and running quickly down the steps, took the road to the farm.
A little red-haired maid was playing by the wayside. He stopped and looked at her, considering.
“Will you take a bit of a letter up to Benson’s for me, little un?” said he presently.
“Iss,” said she staring at him. “Will they give me a penny for it, same as Bess used to?”
Something in the turn of the phrase struck a sudden chill to the lad’s heart, but he shirked investigating the matter and only said:
“What, ’ave you took letters up there before?”
“Iss,” repeated the child. “I carried one up, and Bess giv me a penny. But it was school-time when post-mistress giv me the other, so I giv it to Mr. Preston for ’er. And Bess didn’t giv me no penny.”