“How could I forget you,” sprang to Max’s lips, but he said instead, “Good-morning, Miss Graham. I have come to help you. Miss Raynor thinks it is bad for your heart to reach so high.”
Maude could have told him that her heart had not beaten one half as fast while reaching up as it was beating now, with him there beside her holding the vine while she tied it to its place, his hand touching hers and his arm once thrown out to keep her from falling as she stumbled backward. It took a long time to fix that honeysuckle, and Max had leisure to tell Maude of a call made upon her mother only a week before.
“Spring Farm is looking its loveliest, with the roses and lilies in bloom,” he said, “and Angie, my sister, is enjoying it immensely. She has filled the house with her city friends and has made some changes, of which I think you would approve. Your mother does, but when she wanted to cut down that apple-tree in the corner I would not let her do it. You remember it, don’t you?”
“Oh, Mr. Gordon,” Maude exclaimed, “don’t let her touch that tree. My play-house was under it, and there the people used to come to see me.”
He did not know who the people were, for he had never heard of Maude’s brain children,—the Kimbricks and the Websters,—and could hardly have understood if he had; but Maude’s voice was very pathetic and the eyes which looked at him were full of tears, moving him strangely and making him very earnest in his manner as he assured her that every tree and shrub should be kept intact for her.
“You know you are going to buy it back,” he continued laughingly, as they walked slowly toward the house where Grace was waiting to be taken in to lunch.
“Yes, and I shall do it, too. You will see; it may be many years, but I trust you to keep it for me,” Maude said, and he replied, “You may trust me with anything, and I shall not disappoint you.”
The talk by the honeysuckle was one of many which took place while Max was at the Cedars, for Grace was too unselfish to keep him chained to her side, and insisted that he should enjoy what there was to enjoy in the way of rides and drives in the neighborhood, and as she could not often go with him she sent Maude in her stead, even though she knew the danger there was in it, for she was not insensible to Max’s admiration for the girl, or Maude’s interest in him.
“If Max is true to me to the last, and he will be, it is all I ask,” she thought, and gave no sign of the ache in her heart, when she saw him going from her with Maude and felt that it was in more senses than one. “If he is happy, I am happy, too, she would say to herself, as she sat alone hour after hour, while Max and Maude explored the country in every direction.
Sometimes they drove together, but oftener rode, for Maude was a fine horsewoman and never looked better than when on horseback, in the becoming habit which Grace had given her and which fitted her admirably. Together they went through the pleasant Richland woods, where the grass was like a mossy carpet beneath their horses’ hoofs, and the singing of the birds and the brook was the only sound which broke the summer stillness, then again they galloped over the hills and round the lake, and once through the Bush district, up to the little log house which Max expressed a wish to see. It was past the hour for school. Teacher and scholars had gone home, and tying their horses to the fence they went into the dingy room and sat down side by side upon one of the wooden benches, and just where a ray of sunlight fell upon Maude’s face and hair, for she had removed her hat and was fanning herself with it. She was very beautiful, with that halo around her head, Max thought, as he sat watching and listening to her, as in answer to his question, “How could you endure it here?” she told him of her terrible homesickness during the first weeks of her life as a school-teacher.