“A blue-bell,” she laughingly persisted. “I have sometimes picked out a fine one, growing in some easy soft mould, and undermined him, and worked round him, ten inches deep, fancying I had got to the root of him at last, when slip went the knife; and all was over. Many a time I have sat with the cut-off stalk in my hand, the long, white, slender stalk, ending in two delicate green leaves, with a tiny bud between—you know it; and actually cried, not only for vexation over lost labour, but because it seemed such a pity to have destroyed what one never could make alive again.”
She said that, looking right into my face with her innocent eyes.
This girl, from her habit of speaking exactly as she thinks, and whether from her solitary country rearing, or her inate simplicity of character, thinking at once more naturally and originally than most women, will, doubtless, often say things like these.
An idea once or twice this morning had flitted across my mind, whether it would not be better for me to break through my hermit ways, and allow myself to pay occasional visits among happy households, or the occasional society of good and cultivated women; now it altogether vanished. It would be a thing impossible.
This young lady must have very quick perceptions, and an accurate memory of trivial things, for, scarcely had she uttered the last words, when all her face was dyed crimson and red, as if she thought she had hurt or offended me. I judged it best to answer her thoughts out plain.
“I agree with you that to kill wantonly even a flower is an evil deed. But you need not have minded saying that to me, even after our argument at the Cedars. I am not in your sense a soldier—a professed man-slayer, my vocation is rather the other way. Yet even for the former I could find arguments of defence.”
“You mean, there are higher things than mere life, and greater crimes than taking it away? So I have been thinking myself, lately. You set me thinking, for the which I am glad to own myself your debtor.”
I had not a word of answer to this acknowledgment, at once frank and dignified. She went on:—
“If I said foolish or rude things that night, you must remember how apt one is to judge from personal experience, and I have never seen any fair specimen of the army. Except,” and her manner prevented all questioning of what duty elevated into a truth,—“except, of course, Captain Treherne.”
He caught his name.