"At least it has saved your explaining the situation, and you should be thankful for that."
The book slipped suddenly to the ground and lay, all unheeded, and she began to laugh in a strange high key. Wondering, I took a step toward her; but as I did so she fled from me, running toward the house, never stopping or slackening speed, until I had lost sight of her altogether.
Thus the whole miserable business had befallen, dazing me by its very suddenness like a "bolt from the blue." I had returned to the Three Jolly Anglers, determined to follow the advice of the Duchess and return to London by the next train. Yet, after passing a sleepless night, here I was sitting in my old place beneath the alders pretending to fish.
The river was laughing among the reed, just as merrily as ever, bees hummed and butterflies wheeled and hovered--life and the world were very fair. Yet for once I was blind to it all; moreover, my pipe refused to "draw"--pieces of grass, twigs, and my pen-knife were alike unavailing.
So I sat there, brooding upon the fickleness of womankind, as many another has done before me, and many will doubtless do after, alack!
And the sum of my thoughts was this: Lisbeth had deceived me; the hour of trial had found her weak; my idol was only common clay, after all. And yet she had but preferred wealth to comparative poverty, which surely according to all the rules of common sense, had shown her possessed of a wisdom beyond her years. And who was I to sit and grieve over it? Under the same circumstances ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have chosen precisely the same course; but then to me Lisbeth had always seemed the one exempt--the hundredth woman; moreover, there be times when love, unreasoning and illogical, is infinitely more beautiful than this much-vaunted common sense.
This and much more was in my mind as I sat fumbling with my useless pipe and staring with unseeing eyes at the flow of the river. My thoughts, however, were presently interrupted by something soft rubbing against me, and looking down, I beheld Dorothy's fluffy kitten, Louise. Upon my attempting to pick her up, she bounded from me in that remarkable sideways fashion peculiar to her kind, and stood regarding me from a distance, her tail straight up in the air and her mouth opening and shutting without a sound. At length, having given vent to a very feeble attempt at a mew, she zig-zagged to me, and, climbing upon my knee, immediately fell into a purring slumber.
"Hallo, Uncle Dick!--I mean, what ho, Little-John!" cried a voice, and looking over my shoulder carefully, so as not to disturb the balance of "Louise," I beheld the Imp. It needed but a glance at the bow in his hand, the three arrows in his belt, and the feather in his cap, to tell me who he was for the time being.
"How now, Robin?" I inquired.
"I'm a bitter, disappointed man, Uncle Dick!" he answered, putting up a hand to feel if his feather was in place.