He hurried to the window, shaking with excitement.
There was Leola standing upright on the greensward, brushing her blue skirt, and humming a little song to herself.
“Are you hurt?” he quavered, anxiously, and she looked up, laughing maliciously:
“Hurt? Oh, no, not a bit!” she called back, gayly. “I just let myself go limply, and I came down like a cat on all fours in the grass and clover. I have fallen higher than that from trees many a time without hurting myself. It’s easy enough when you learn to go limp and not stiffen yourself; ha, ha!”
As he glared in amazement she waved her hand, audaciously, adding:
“You ought to try it yourself some time, Uncle Hermann! Well, good-bye, sir, and mind you don’t let me hear any more of this match-making business, unless you go and get married yourself!” and with that parting shot, the merry girl ran across the grass, a vision of youth and health and beauty, to where her pony was waiting, ready saddled, beneath a tree. Vaulting lightly to his back, without even waiting to fasten the loosened tresses of her ruddy hair, the wild young thing was off and away down the mountain road, her young bosom throbbing tumultuously, half with anger, half with mirth, at the rencontre with her guardian.
“The old silly, to think of marrying me off, without so much as by your leave! The idea!” she exclaimed aloud, adding, more soberly, “Not that I’d mind having a rich husband if he was handsome and winning, too, but how often I have heard it said that good looks and riches seldom go together, so if that’s the case I’d marry for love and let money go!”
Her fit of anger dissolving in the sunshine of sweet good nature, she hummed, as she galloped on, a fragment of a tender little love-song, sweet as it was sad:
“Honey flowers for the honey-comb,
And the honey-bees from home.