It was so with Bessie, at all events. She loved Berrie Down Hollow with a love almost amounting to passion. To her, that place was the realization of peace, happiness, home, beauty, contentment; and yet she could comprehend the natural desire of the lad who stood beside her to leave Hertfordshire and go forth to push his way in the world.
It was of that desire they had been talking as they sauntered across the fields towards North Kemms.
The hush of the first day in the week was around them and above; but still their discourse had been of the world, its prizes, its blanks, its successes, its disappointments, and the boy’s cheek flushed as he spoke of how he should like to win a name and a position for himself in the great city, where the greatest part of Bessie Ormson’s life had been spent.
“Of course I shall be sorry to go away from the old place,” he went on, “to leave it and Heather; but I should feel proud to make a fortune, and bring it back to her. I should not stay away from Berrie Down for ever.”
“Yes, you would,” Bessie answered. Then, seeing him look surprised, she went on: “You, that is, the Alick Dudley who is talking to me now, would go away, and never return. I know it is well for you to go; but still, do not think you could ever return. You will leave here a boy with a face as smooth as my own, and you will come back a man, never to hear the song of the birds with quite the same ears—never to look out over the fields and the woods with quite the same eyes—never to listen to the trees and the winds whispering quite the same words. You will go out”—from the height of her twenty-three years she looked down and told him this—“and you may come back, but the noise of the world will mingle with the old familiar sounds, and never let those sounds fall in perfect harmony on your soul more.”
And it was then they came to the Kemm, where Bessie paused to look into the stream.
“I wonder, Bessie, where you have learned all you know,” said Alick, after a pause.
“Not out of books,” she replied, laughing; “the truth is I know very little, except that I am very happy at Berrie Down, and shall be very sorry to leave it.”
“Do you not expect to be happy when you leave Berrie Down?” he asked.
“That is not a question to be rashly answered,” she said. “I may be—I may not be. Don’t you remember that game Lally plays at—blowing dandelion-down away to tell the hour? Whatever number she has arrived at, when the last feather floats off, is the time. My future depends on much such a chance; but whether it turn out happy or unhappy, be certain I shall not sit down and bemoan myself.”