Now all this forgotten lore came back to her from out-of-the-way places in her mind. When I was a girl, it was only too easy for people to forget such things, for in my day, no sooner did one grow up than the customs of young ladyhood demanded that one should spend most of one’s time in the house. Even skating was denied women, and Ellen’s love of the outdoors met with a steady stream of disapproval from every one, including Roger. The only people who had not frowned on her were her mother and Mr. Sylvester, who held the heretical theory that it was good even for a woman to know the works of the Lord, even though a close and intimate knowledge was bad for smoothness of hair and neatness of frock.
More than that, there was a desire awakened in Ellen’s mind, of conquering this wild and morose child, who had given his heart so unreservedly to Alec.
She asked him,—
“Do you like going out with me, Tyke?”
“No ’m,” he said, “not especially.”
“But”—she told him—“you don’t need to come if you don’t want to.”
He flushed all over and said, “I didn’t mean that. Don’t you see, Alec told me to, so I don’t mind at all, ’cause it’s for him.”
“Now I realize,” she wrote, “that whenever I’ve sat down anywhere children have always come around me. Until the last year or two I’ve known all the little boys; there’s never been a time when some of Alec’s youngsters haven’t been perched in our yard, and now comes along this boy who takes me out with him as he would carry a package for Alec.”
There was nothing for it, she must make him her own. I think it was the first desire she had had in a year’s time, except the desire for the ultimate peace. She wooed him first out of his shyness, and as I would see them talking together I would see all the mannerisms of the Ellen I had known, of whom Aunt Sarah said, “She seemed about to burst into flame.” All her forgotten shy guiles that had led her before into the inaccessible hearts of boys woke up one by one. I don’t know how far she went back on the road to childhood, in these rambles, or how much she remembered of the golden time when Alec and she played truant together by the hills and brooks.
One day Tyke appeared with this command: