CHAPTER X
The Stray Page
RICHARD LATHAM, his dictation over for the day, had gone with Stetson to the bank. He had been unusually silent, Anne Dallas had thought, absent-minded, and he looked pale, as if he had not rested well.
She had not asked him questions; more than most men he disliked to discuss his health, but it seemed to Anne, considering after he had gone, that Richard Latham was not himself.
She sat in the poet’s beautiful garden at work on some lace, the pillow on her knee. The fragrance of apple blossoms was on the warm breeze that brushed her face.
“‛Sumer is icumen in,’” thought Anne, skilfully catching her thread into a knot on her needle point. She felt more than usual pity for Richard, recalling his patient face, to know that he, of all men best fitted to dwell with enchanted eyes on summer’s loveliness, never again would see it.
“Miss Dallas! Miss Dallas! Miss Anne! Miss Anne Dallas! Anne! Anne!” shouted someone in such rapid-fire calling that reply was impossible. It could be but one person, and Anne Dallas looked up expectantly to see little Anne coming flying down the garden. Her long, thin legs, in their long, brown stockings, her brown, straight frock, her bobbed hair standing out around her head, all combined to give her the effect of a forked branch of a tree which had been snapped off and blown along the path by a higher wind than that which was actually blowing. Behind her ran the beagle, Cricket, his black-and-tan ears streaming backward, his tongue out, his eyes excitedly rolling, his breath visibly short. He did not venture with Anne into most of her explorations, but he had learned that the Latham garden was safe for timid bow-legged dogs, and hither he confidently came.
“What is it, Anne, dear?” asked Anne Dallas, guarding her work against little Anne’s imminent onslaught. “Glad to see you.”
“Guess what!” cried little Anne, throwing herself upon Anne. As she spoke she waved papers held together by a fastener.
“I never could guess!” declared Anne with conviction. “Are you appointed Queen of the Birds, or are you sentenced to exile in an ant hill, you little quicksilver creature?”
“Oh, you are nice!” panted little Anne, appreciatively. “This isn’t a—a—an appointing dockerment. What do you s’pose?”