It was dusty in the highway, and we met no one for at least a mile except the peasants, who passed into the landscape as part of its picture. The intense green of May, and its quickening blossoms, strewed every nook and plantation; but the sweetness of the country, so exuberant just there, only seemed to frame, with fitting ornament, the one idea I contemplated,—that he was close at hand. There had been much sun, and one was naturally inclined to shade in the thrilling May heats, which permeate the veins almost like love's fever, and are as exciting to the pulses.
At last we came to a brook, a lovely freshet, broadening into a mill-stream; for we could see far off in the clear air the flash of that wheel, and hear its last murmuring fall. But here at hand it was all lonely, unspanned by any bridge, and having its feathery banks unspoiled by any clearing hand. A knot of beautiful beech-trees threw dark kisses on the trembling water; there were wildest rushes here, and the thick spring leaves of the yet unbloomed forget-me-not on either hand. The blue hill of Cecilia lay yet before us, but something in my companion's face made me conjecture that here he wished to rest. Before he even suggested it I pulled out my cambric handkerchief, and running on before him, laid it beneath the drooping beech-boughs on the swelling grass. I came back to him again, and entreated him to repose. He even flushed with satisfaction at my request, which I made, as I ever do, rather impertinently. He ran, too, with me, and taking out his own handkerchief, which was a royal-purple silk, he spread it beside mine, and drew me to that throne with his transparent fingers upon my hand. I say "transparent," for they were as though the roseate blood shone through, and the wandering violet veins showed the clearness of the unfretted palm. But it was a hand too refined for model beauty, too thin and rare for the youth, the almost boyhood, that shone on his forehead and in his unwearied eye. The brightness of heaven seemed to pour itself upon my soul as I sat beside him and felt that no one in the whole world was at that moment so near him as I. He pulled a few rushes from the margin, and began to weave a sort of basket. So fleetly his fingers twisted and untwisted themselves that it was as if he were accustomed to do nothing but sit and weave green rushes the livelong day.
"Pull me some more!" he said at length imploringly; and I, who had been absorbed in those clear fingers playing, looked up at him as I stretched my arm. His eyes shone with the starlight of pure abstraction, and I answered not except by gathering the rushes, breaking them off, and laying them one by one across his knees. The pretty work was nearly finished; it was the loveliest green casket I could have fancied, with a plaited handle. It looked like a fairy field-flung treasure. I wished it were for me. When it was quite ready, and as complete and perfect as Nature's own work, he rose, and seizing the lowest branch of the swaying beech grove, hung the plaything upon it and said, "I wish it were filled with ripe red strawberries."
"Why so, sir?" I ventured.
"Because one would like to imagine a little child finding a green basket by the dusty way, filled with strawberries."
We arose, and again walked on.
"Sir, I would rather have the basket than the strawberries."
"I wish a little child may be of your mind. Were you happy, Charles, when you were a little child?"
"Sir, I was always longing to be a man. I never considered what it was to be a little child."
"Thou art a boy, and that is to be a man-child,—the beautiful fate! But it is thy beautiful fate to teach others also, as only children teach."