"I well believe that, Mr. Fletcher." And she left me.
When John came home I informed him of what had passed. He listened, though he made no comment whatever. But all the evening he sat turning over Miss March's books, and reading either aloud or to himself fragments out of one—which I had expected he would have scouted, inasmuch as it was modern not classical poetry: in fact, a collection of Lyrical Ballads, brought out that year by a young man named Mr. William Wordsworth, and some anonymous friend, conjointly. I had opened it, and found therein great nonsense; but John had better luck—he hit upon a short poem called "Love," by the Anonymous Friend, which he read, and I listened to, almost as if it had been Shakspeare. It was about a girl named Genevieve—a little simple story—everybody knows it now; but it was like a strange, low, mystic music, luring the very heart out of one's bosom, to us young visionaries then.
I wonder if Miss March knew the harm she did, and the mischief that has been done among young people in all ages (since Caxton's days), by the lending books, especially books of poetry.
The next day John was in a curious mood. Dreamy, lazy, mild; he sat poring in-doors, instead of roaming abroad—in truth, was a changed lad. I told him so, and laid it all to the blame of the Anonymous Friend: who held him in such fascinated thrall that he only looked up once all the morning,—which was when Mr. and Miss March went by. In the afternoon he submitted, lamb-like, to be led down to the beech-wood—that the wonderful talking stream might hold forth to him as it did to me. But it could not—ah, no! it could not. Our lives, though so close, were yet as distinct as the musical living water and the motionless grey rock beside which it ran. The one swept joyfully on to its appointed course: the other—was what Heaven made it, abode where Heaven placed it, and likewise fulfilled its end.
Coming back out of the little wood, I took John a new way I had discovered, through the prettiest undulating meadow, half-field, half-orchard, where trees loaded with ripening cider apples and green crabs made a variety among the natural foresters. Under one of these, as we climbed the slope—for field, beech-wood, and common formed a gradual ascent—we saw a vacant table laid.
"A pretty piece of rusticity—domestic Arcadia on a small scale," said John; "I should like to invite myself to tea with them. Who can they be?"
"Probably visitors. Resident country-folks like their meals best under a decent roof-tree. I should not wonder if this were not one of Mr. March's vagaries."
"Don't say vagaries—he is an old man."
"Don't be reproachful—I shall say nought against him. Indeed, I have no opportunity, for there they both are coming hither from the house."
Sure enough they were—Miss March helping her father across the uneven bit of common to the gate which led to the field. Precisely at that gate we all four met.