He was holding back a branch as he spoke, and his eyes were on a level with hers. She felt caught as in a net, and struggled vainly to keep down her color. “No,” said she, “welcome is a guest’s due, whether he come early or late. I should be sorry to be lacking in the duties of a hostess, though my drawing-room is somewhat more spacious than cosy,” she continued, looking around on the fields into which they had emerged, “and my facilities for bespeaking you welcome greater than my power to make you comfortable.”
“Comfort is a satisfaction of the mind, rather than of the body. I am not uncomfortable, Miss Fairchild.” Then as he stooped to relieve her of half her burden of trailing leaves and flowers, he exclaimed in a matter-of-fact tone, “Your aunt is a notable woman, Miss Fairchild, I admire her greatly.”
“What!” said she, “you have been to the cottage? You have seen Aunt Belinda?”
“Of course,” laughed he, “or how should I be here? You have been sent for, Miss Fairchild, and I am the humble bearer of your aunt’s commands. But I forget, the practical has nothing to do with such a day. I am supposed to have sprung from the ground, and to know by instinct, just in what nook you were hiding from the sunlight. Very well. I acknowledge that instinct is sometimes capable of going a great way.”
But this time her ready answer was lacking. She was wondering what her aunt would think of this sudden appearance of a stranger whose name she had never so much as mentioned.
“It is a pleasant rest to stand and look at a view like that, after a summer of musty labor,” said he, gazing up the river with a truly appreciative eye. “I do not wonder you carry the charm of the wild woods in your laugh and glance, if you have been brought up in the sight of such a view as that.”
“It has been my meat and drink from childhood,” said she, and wondered why she wanted to say no more upon her favorite theme.
“Yet you tell me you love the city?”
“Too much to ever again be happy here.”
It was a slip for which her cheek burned and her lids fell, the moment after. She had been thinking of Mr. Sylvester, and unconsciously spake as she might have done, if he had been at her side, instead of this genial-hearted young man. With a woman’s instinctive desire to retrieve herself, she hurriedly continued, “Life is so full and large and deep in a great town, if you are only happy enough to meet those who are its blood and brain and sinew. One misses the rush of the great wheel of time in a spot like this. The world moves, but we do not feel it; it is like the quiet sweep of the stars over our heads. But in the city, days, weeks and months make themselves felt. The universe jars under the feet of hurrying masses. The story of the world is being written on pavement, corridor, and dome, so that he who runs may read. One realizes he is alive; the unit is part of the multiple. To those who are tired, God gives the rest of the everlasting hills, but to those who are eager, he holds out the city with its innumerable opportunities and incentives. And I am eager,” she said. “The flower blooms on the mountain, and its perfume is sweet, but the chariot sings as it rushes, and the noise of its wheels is music in my ears.”