"Won't you come in, Roger?" she said, sweetly. "Our strawberries are ripe."
The boy smiled at the tempting suggestion, but shook his head.
"Can't," he answered, briefly. "I've got a lot of Latin to do. Good-by."
He nodded pleasantly and went his way. It lay through the village and along the fields and gardens beyond. Just as he came in sight of his home,—a square, elm-shaded mansion of red brick, standing on a gentle rise a little farther on,—he paused at a place where a shallow brook came creeping through the lush grass of the meadow which bounded his father's possessions. He listened a moment to its low gurgling, so suggestive of wood rambles and speckled trout, then tossed his strap of books into the meadow, leaped after it, and followed the brook's course for a little distance, stooping and peering with his keen brown eyes into each dusky pool.
All at once, as he looked and listened, another sound than the brook's plashing came to his ears, and he started up and turned his head. A stump fence, black and bristling, divided the meadow from the adjoining field, its uncouth projections draped in tender, clinging vines, and he stepped softly toward it and looked across. It was a rocky field, where a thin crop of grass was trying to hold its own against a vast growth of weeds, and was getting the worst of it,—a barren, shiftless field, fitly matching the big shiftless barn and small shiftless house to which it appertained.
Lying prone among the daisies was Lilly O'Connell, her face buried in her apron, the red rippling mane falling about her, her slender form shaking with deep and unrestrained sobs.
Roger looked on a moment and then leaped the fence. The girl rose instantly to a sitting position, and glared defiance at him from a pair of tear-stained eyes.
"What are you crying about?" he asked, with awkward kindness.
Her face softened, and a fresh sob shook her.
"Oh, come!" said Roger; "don't mind what a lot of sneaks say."