"But, Jack," she began again, a wrinkle of distress deepening between her eyes. "If he shouldn't come you'd be so awfully disappointed!"
Jack's thin hand waved both her and her objections aside.
"Hike along," he insisted, cheerfully, "I merely said if!"
Considerably worried by what she thought was a groundless hope of Jack's, Mary started out of the gate. His suggestion seemed to change the entire landscape, and instead of seeing it as it had grown to look to her accustomed eyes, she saw it as she imagined it would appear to Phil; the cottage she was leaving behind her, the wide blue lupin meadows ahead, the white of the wild plum blossoms mingled with the glowing branches of the red-bud trees, in every lane and stretch of woodland.
With her old childish propensity for day-dreaming unabated, she made pictures for herself as she walked along towards the foot-bridge. Suppose he really would come, and she, by some intuition of his approach, could divine the day and hour. She would like to be all in white when he met her, emerging from the edge of the woods with her arms heaped up with snowy masses of wild plum blossoms, and a spray of red-bud in her hair. Or, maybe, it would be more picturesque for her to be standing in the boat, poling slowly towards the landing, a cargo of wild flowers at her feet like a picture of the Spirit of Spring.
Here she broke off from her musings, saying, half aloud, "But as sure as I posed to look like a Spring goddess I'd be looking like a young goose. It doesn't pay for me to plan impressive entrances and meetings; they always turn out with my looking perfectly ridiculous."
She had reached the first turn in the road by this time, and, stooping to tie her shoe, suddenly became aware of the fact that her hands were empty. She had started off without the alarm-clock and the magnifying glass which she always carried on these trips. In addition she had intended to bring a large market-basket to-day, in which to put the flowers. The basket, with the clock and glass inside, was in her hand before she started. She remembered she had set it down for a moment on the front step while she went back into Jack's room, and it was what he said about Phil's coming that made her go off without it. There was no time to lose, so she started back, running all the way.
Snatching up the basket from the step where she found it still undisturbed, she was starting off again, when a little bird-like cry stopped her. It was like the softest notes of a mocking-bird.
"That provoking little wildcat is out of her cage again!" she exclaimed, stopping to look all around. "Here, Matilda, kitty, kitty, where are you?"