“Barbara should teach him,” suggested one of the little girls slyly. “She’s splendid at Rule of Three.”
“Which is more than you are,” said Mrs. Walrond in severe tones, “who always make thirteen out of five and seven. Barbara, love, you are looking very tired. All this noise is too much for you, you must go and lie down at once in your own room. No, not on the sofa, in your own room. Now say good-bye to Anthony and go.”
So Barbara, who was really tired, though with a happy weariness, did as she was bid. Her hand met Anthony’s and lingered there for a little, her violet eyes met his brown eyes and lingered there a little; her lips spoke some few words of commonplace farewell. Then staying a moment to take the violets from the cracked vase, and another moment to kiss her father as she passed him, she walked, or rather glided from the room with the graceful movement that was peculiar to her, and lo! at once for Anthony it became a very emptiness. Moreover, he grew aware of the hardness of his wooden seat and that the noise of the girls was making his head ache. So presently he too rose and departed.
CHAPTER III
AUNT MARIA
Six months or so had gone by and summer reigned royally at Eastwich, for thus was the parish named of which the Reverend Septimus Walrond had spiritual charge. The heath was a blaze of gold, the cut hay smelt sweetly in the fields, the sea sparkled like one vast sapphire, the larks beneath the sun and the nightingales beneath the moon sang their hearts out on Gunter’s Hill, and all the land was full of life and sound and perfume.
On one particularly beautiful evening, after partaking of a meal called “high tea,” Barbara, quite strong again now and blooming like the wild rose upon her breast, set out alone upon a walk. Her errand was to the cottage of that very fisherman whose child her father had baptised on the night when her life trembled in the balance. Having accomplished this she turned homewards, lost in reverie, events having happened at the Rectory which gave her cause for thought. When she had gone a little way some instinct led her to look up. About fifty yards away a man was walking towards her to all appearance also lost in reverie. Even at that distance and in the uncertain evening light she knew well enough that this was Anthony. Her heart leapt at the sight of him and her cheeks seemed to catch the hue of the wild rose on her bosom. Then she straightened her dress a little and walked on.
In less than a minute they had met.
“I heard where you had gone and came to meet you,” he said awkwardly. “How well you are looking, Barbara, how well and——” he had meant to add “beautiful,” but his tongue stumbled at the word and what he said was “brown.”
“If I were an Indian I suppose I should thank you for the compliment, Anthony, but as it is I don’t know. But how well you are looking, how well and by comparison—fat.”
Then they both laughed, and he explained at length how he had been able to get home two days earlier than he expected; also that he had taken his degree with even higher honours than he hoped.