The sea-birds came as usual to the knoll to be fed; but even their plumage looked cleaner, if that could have been possible, and more ornate. They were quicker on the wing too, and their voices were shriller and more musical. By the highway sides anemones began now to snow the turf, and many a little nameless yellow flower, and the gowans or mountain daisies spread wide their crimson-tipped petals to woo the sunshine.
To be out of doors at this season, in this romantic and beautiful sea-laved land, was heaven itself, a happy, hopeful time that Frank Antony, with his big poetic heart, could have wished would last for aye. It was better far, he thought, than the red rush of summer, with its floral glory that would end so soon in autumn brown and sear. But some hearts are built to love spring and only spring. They want to have the buds and flowers always springing, and birds singing their first and therefore their real songs of happiness and love.
Lotty would be thirteen this year.
'Dear me,' she said looking additionally wise for a moment, 'what a long, long life!'
Poor little gipsy lass, that long, long life had not been wanting in sorrow! And it was probably for this reason that it seemed to her so long.
They were bird-nesting among the yellow gorse that scented all the air around them and hugged the moorland in great golden patches; and it was here the rose-linnet had its cosy nest and sang so sweetly to its little brown mate so quiet on her speckled eggs. Both Antony and she loved to see birds' nests, but it is needless to say they touched them not.
'I'll soon be old, Mr Blake!'
Her companion laughed; and Wallace, fancying he saw the joke, gave Lotty's ear a friendly lick in passing.
'Soon be as old as Crona, won't you, dear?' said Antony.
'Oh, I don't know how long it takes to be as old as Crona, though somehow I never think that my fairy godmother is aged.'