Gay looked up quickly. It had been understood only yesterday that they were to wait for Kitty's return for that picture. His taking it for granted that Lloyd would assume the part augured well for her hopes.
"You know that poem of Browning's, don't you, Miss Sherman?" he asked, smiling across at her.
Now Lloyd had never cared for Browning. In fact she frankly admitted that she had never got far enough into many of his poems to know what he was talking about. At Warwick Hall Miss Chilton had been such an enthusiastic interpreter of his that ten of the girls in Lloyd's class had formed a Browning club. Although she declined their invitation to join them, she was more complimented by that invitation than any other of that school term, and envied them their apparent enjoyment of what to her was a tangle of vague meanings. Now when, she saw Leland take a well worn copy from his pocket and flip over the leaves to find the place, with an ease that showed long familiarity with it, she wished that she had joined the club. It made her feel childish and immature to think that she could not discuss this subject with him as any one of those ten girls could have done. But it was one of the simple poems to which the book opened. From her seat opposite, Lloyd could see the marked margins and underscored lines, as he read aloud:
"'Here is the garden she walked across
Arm in my arm such a short while since.
· · · · · · · ·
Down this side of the gravel walk
She went, while her robe's edge brushed the box.
And here she paused in her gracious talk
To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox.'"
"Oh, I can just see that picture," cried Miss Marks enthusiastically. "I wish we had time to take it to-day."
"But wait, here's a better one," he added, turning the page.
"'This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,
Stooped over in doubt, as settling its claim,
Till she gave me with pride to make no slip,
Its soft, meandering Spanish name.
What a name! Was it love or praise?
Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?
I must learn Spanish one of these days
Only for that slow, sweet name's sake.'"
Lloyd picked up the book open at the place where he laid it, face downward, on the rock.
"I wondah what flowah Browning meant," she said, "that had such a 'soft, meandering Spanish name. Speech half-asleep or song half-awake—' It must have been something exquisitely beautiful or he wouldn't have been willing to learn a language just for the sake of knowing that one name."
Farther down the page were other underscored lines. She read them softly, almost under her breath.