“Bird that lays rather dreadful eggs,� said Crane. “In the next war—— Why, where the deuce has he gone?�
“Pigs, pigs,� said Hood sadly. “The overpowering charm which pigs exercise upon us at a certain time of life; when we hear their trotters in our dreams and their little curly tails twine about us like the tendrils of the vine——�
“Oh, bosh,� said the Colonel.
For indeed Mr. Hilary Pierce had vanished in a somewhat startling manner, ducking under the corner of a hedge and darting up a steeper path, over a gate and across the corner of a hayfield, where a final bound through bursting bushes brought him on top of a low wall looking down at the pig-sty and Miss Joan Hardy, who was calmly walking away from it. He sprang down on to the path; the morning sun picked out everything in clear colours like a child’s toy-book; and standing with his hands spread out and his wisps of yellow hair brushed in all directions by the bushes, he recalled an undignified memory of Shock-Headed Peter.
“I felt I must speak to you before I went,� he said. “I’m going away, not exactly on active service, but on business—on very active business. I feel like the fellows did when they went to the war ... and what they wanted to do first.... I am aware that a proposal over a pig-sty is not so symbolical to some as to me, but really and truly ... I don’t know whether I mentioned it, but you may be aware that I worship you.�
Joan Hardy was quite aware of it; but the conventionalities in her case were like concentric castle-walls; the world-old conventions of the countryside. There was in them the stiff beauty of old country dances and the slow and delicate needlework of a peasantry. Of all the ladies whose figures must be faintly traced in the tapestry of these frivolous tales of chivalry, the most reticent and dignified was the one who was not in the worldly sense a lady at all.
She stood looking at him in silence, and he at her; as the lift of her head had some general suggestion of a bird, the line of her profile had a delicate suggestion of a falcon, and her face was of the fine tint that has no name, unless we could talk of a bright brown.
“Really, you seem in a terrible hurry,� she said. “I don’t want to be talked to in a rush like this.�
“I apologize,� he said. “I can’t help being in a rush, but I didn’t want you to be in a rush. I only wanted you to know. I haven’t done anything to deserve you, but I am going to try. I’m going off to work; I feel sure you believe in quiet steady work for a young man.�
“Are you going into the bank?� she asked innocently. “You said your uncle was in a bank.�