The village through which they took their way was but a tiny one, a green and sheltered cradle for the warm brick walls and lichened chapel of the old college; and soon the grass-grown flagged walk gave way to one of trodden earth, the houses grew sparser and smaller, the trees thicker and less carefully tended. They were in the country. The season was well forward: though the calendar marked April, the warm blue sky, the odorous earth, the fresh, 18 full grass, all smelled of May. The early flowers were out long before their wonted times; the birds, misled by the generous sun, were already nesting musically; shock-headed urchins, those most delicate barometers of the real seasons, had bravely cast off their shoes and stockings and renewed the year in the splashing puddles of some recent rain. All the scene spoke peace and promise of better to come--all, I say, but those two fractious young souls who walked diverse among the lovely unity of the pleasant world about them. Antony strode on, his eyes fixed on the winding road, though it is to be doubted if he saw it. Who would have thought to find him, Antony, in such a baited, hot-necked frame? The day had gone hideously awry from the beginning, and it was all the fault of this blue-eyed, brown-cheeked chit.
She, for her part, moved easily and it must be admitted, gracefully, beside him. Her step shot out from the hip, elastic as a boy's; only the faintest shade of red under her skin confessed to the pace he drove her; she drew regular breaths, through her small nostrils. Though she could not match his stride, she yet fell into a sort of rythmical accompaniment to it; evidently she was an 19 accomplished and enduring dancer.
They swung around a sharp corner under a great sprawling oak and fairly mowed down an unattractive red-headed boy, insufficiently attired and freckled beyond belief, who was hurrying frantically in a direction only too obviously opposed to their own. Conscious of a distinct relief at the necessity for constructive action, Antony stooped and raised the howling and resentful creature, who dug his grimy knuckles into his eyes and yelled the louder at each polite query as to his injuries. After a few minutes of this 20 fruitless performance, Antony, irritated at his failure to bring even this sordid incident to a triumphant conclusion, was about to produce a coin and leave his victim to the sovereign solace of Time, that great healer, when his companion, who had stood, hitherto, discreetly aside from the business, now stepped forward and laid a small brown hand on the heaving shoulder of the injured infant.
"Where were you going, Bubby?" she asked abruptly.
He looked up from his bent and screening arm, stared a moment, and replied in a matter-of-fact tone, without a trace of the sobs that still echoed about them:
"To see the big snake!"
"The snake?" She shuddered involuntarily. Had the child mentioned Leviathan, the monster would not have seemed more exotic to this rural and domestic spot. By judicious questioning they elicited from the suddenly secretive imp the successive facts of the spectacular and recent arrival of an enormous foreign reptile; its display under a tent on the outskirts of the village, very near their present station; the establishment of a tariff of 21 fifteen cents for one view, or two separate opportunities for excitement at the comparatively small sum of a quarter of a dollar; and lastly, the cruel certainty that the delay occasioned by this unexpected and sudden meeting had undoubtedly cost their informant his only possible view of the monster, since the price of his admission, though offered voluntarily by his maternal uncle, was contingent upon his arrival at the tent ahead of his cousin, who, in case of a previous appearance, was to receive the prize.
Overcome afresh by the bitterness of his lot, the red-headed boy would have renewed his unpleasant and gulping demonstrations, had not Antony hastily produced a coin of sufficient size to insure two periods of ecstasy and offered it in reparation for what he handsomely described as his clumsiness. Staggered by this princely generosity, the urchin balanced the silver piece doubtfully, then with a shy and unlooked-for courtesy suggested that they should use it together.
"And what should I do, then?" asked the young lady with a smile--I have mentioned that she had, when she saw fit to employ it, an exceedingly pleasant manner. 22