He turned at the word and re-entered the church.
“Who is he?” asked Romola, looking after him.
“His name is Savonarola,” returned their boy friend. “He is a great man, and some day the world will wonder at him. But we must hasten.”
“But the manuscript,” it was Rose who suddenly bethought herself of the forgotten errand. “What about that?”
“That must wait,” Romola answered. “I must return to my father—he will want to thank you,” she added, to the boy. “You risked a great danger if we had all been overtaken, seeing what House you belong to.”
He smiled, shaking his head ... and with that the street, he, Romola, and all faded. Rose and Ruth were back in their own home.
CHAPTER XIII
Little Nell and the Bun-Shop
Even when you are very old, too old to care about playing games or racing with the cloud-shadows on the grass when the west wind is taking the big white ones that look like ships so gaily across the sky, even then your feel pretty good at the first beginning of spring.
Long before the grass shows a tint of green down by the fence corners and along the brookside there is a new smell to the air, a smell that makes you want to jump up and down and shout. Then come the pussy-willows, grey, demure, and fluffy, as if they had no notion how important they were. And after that—but we haven’t got farther than that just yet.
For that is where the spring stood when Rose and Ruth returned from their first ride of the season to the next ranch with Marmie. A yellow and rose sky looked at them calmly from the west as they reached home and jumped off their ponies.