“That depends,” she said. “There are places where the receipts are bad. One time we made only seven francs and a half.”
Details of that sort were of no interest, but I went on to confess to an unbounded admiration for this mode of life. At this declaration she opened her eyes wide, doubtless amazed that one could envy her when one lived in one of those great buildings, capable of enduring all sorts of bad weather.
“All the same you wouldn’t come with us.” The mere suggestion seemed to please her, but she at once put it away as an absurdity.
“Besides you can’t know much. But you’z cute.”
Again that expression which seemed offensive to my self-love. I could not remain silent under so unworthy an estimate, and I retorted proudly,
“I can ride horse-back.”
I had sometimes been hoisted upon our farmer’s blind mare, and had even experienced a disquietude akin to fear when long shivers ran through her body. My friend appeared enchanted and promised to lend me her black steed.
How does the grown-up heart differ from that of childhood? I had not the least idea of going with her. She did not suppose I was going. I had not the slightest equestrian ability. She had no authority over her horse; without mutual agreement each was conniving at luring the other on. It was a delicious foretaste of the falsehoods which lurk beneath all lovers’ conversations.
Just then, as we both sat silent, a fearful and torturing memory came to me. One phrase—just a short phrase from the book of ballads which I had read and reread during my convalescence, until they seemed to form part of the very atmosphere of my existence, suddenly detached itself from the rest—I heard it within myself as if another than myself had uttered it. It was a line in the legend of The Lord of Burleigh. The Lord of Burleigh is speaking to a peasant girl, who is the prettiest and most modest girl in the village, and what he says is,
There is no one in the world whom I love like thee.