“If you are really interested in the view, Doctor Pryne, it’s across the road. We can go through the kitchen garden. That is shorter than going back through the house.”
The kitchen garden, through which Petra led him, was a jungle of drooping, white-starred blackberry canes. They came out of it through a little wicket gate and crossed the intimate, idle road to the guest house opposite.
“Clare won’t let them cut the grass here,” Petra explained. “Any objection to wading?” Lewis had none and followed the girl around the side of the little house and came to an uncovered piazza at the back. Ignoring the several chairs arranged with an eye to the view there, they sat down side by side on the edge of the piazza boards. From under their feet wide sweeps of June fields surged away in many-colored rippling waves. White and yellow daisies, red and white clovers, golden buttercups, orange devil’s-paintbrush, and sparkling sun-soaked grass dazzled Lewis’ eyes against the view of river and blue hills beyond.
“Paradise will be a June field like this,” he thought, “with the saints reunioning while the angels dance.” He was thinking of Fra Angelico’s “Last Judgment,” the detail of the left corner.—“Petra and I seem to have arrived somewhat ahead of time, though,—and, God knows, without our crowns! This girl! She is a breaker of promises, a vain poser, a liar, a traitor to friendship, and a repulser of innocent babyhood. Clare made her do her paces. Just didn’t she, though!”
But his next thought was more like shock than thought. “Why need her hands be as lovely as her face? Or is this Paradise!” They were clasped about her knees, strong, sun-tanned hands, with long, squarish-tipped fingers. Angelic hands!
Lewis remarked, “It’s nice here.”
Petra agreed, “Yes, isn’t it!”
Lewis lighted a cigarette and Petra pulled a grass blade to make a bracelet, bending forward from lithe hips.
“You thought I was horrid to my baby sister, didn’t you, Doctor Pryne?” she asked bluntly. “I wasn’t, not really. But I couldn’t let her spoil my dress, could I? This is the first time I’ve worn it. It would have to be dry-cleaned if I had picked her up. And things are never so nice again after they are dry-cleaned. Besides, I can’t afford it.”
The dress she had so ruthlessly protected against a bewitching baby was smooth silk, the color of heavy cream. Its only decoration was a flight of embroidered gold and brown bees. They flew up one full sleeve from wristband to shoulder, across the back of the neck and down the other body-side of the frock to the lower edge of the hem. It was—taken by itself—a lovely frock, and if it had not been so utterly Petra’s own, belonged so completely to her shapely young body and coloring, even Lewis—no connoisseur in women’s clothes—would have noticed its lovely detail before this.