The girl withdrew and put a hand to her skirt of lavender-blue as if by instinct, and looked at the distant hills.
“I seldom think of it,” she answered crisply. “The spring and the needs of the feathered flock are enough for me.”
“Are they, Cilla? What of the beyond lands—or was I dreaming when you said you’d like to see them?”
Priscilla only smiled with the dainty aloofness which angered Reuben and enticed him.
“’Tis April,” she said, “and I’m entitled to my whimsies, like the weather. Besides, I met Billy the Fool in the lane yestreen, and he was showing other pictures to me. Nay, do not frown, Reuben,” she broke off, not guessing that Billy’s name was unwelcome to the other on more counts than one. “He knows the hedgerows and the fields so well, and he showed me things as old as the hills—things new and wonderful each spring—things that come to you again each year, Reuben, with a surprise that seems each year to grow fresher and more eager.”
“And what did he show you, Cilla?” asked the other jealously, turning to cry “Gobble-di-gobble-di-gobble” to the turkey-cock, and provoking a hot answer.
“The first wild-strawberry bloom, the first throstle’s nest, the first April look of Sharprise Hill when the sun slants on it through the clouds that mean no harm. Your foreign lands grow misty, Reuben, somehow, and I love Garth village once again. Billy had ever that trick—to make you wise in spite of yourself.”
Reuben paced up and down in a restless way he had; then he stopped and looked at Priscilla of the Good Intent, and in his eyes there was the mischief of a partial truth.
“Those beyond-places will haunt you, Cilla, all the same, and I could take you to them.”
The girl was silent for awhile, and then she drew her lavender-blue skirt more closely round her.