“They’ll die, Bridget,” Miss Mansfield expostulated. “What is the use of picking them now?”
She declared that they would adorn the luncheon-table most appropriately, and, when the farmhouse was reached, busied herself in putting the dazzling white boughs in great brown jars on the table.
Lunch was served in the farmhouse parlor, with the lattice windows open to the sweet spring air, and the sunlight lying in checkered squares across the coarse white table-cloth and on the flagged floor.
Bridget sat opposite to Carey at the table, with the faint blue sky for background behind her dusky hair. He had not seen her for several weeks, and the change in her was very noticeable. He was struck by the thin outline of her cheek when he caught her face in profile. He wondered vaguely whether she was ill, or overworked.
When lunch was over, they started for the woods. Their way led through level meadows, starred with pale cuckoo flowers. Here and there cowslips lifted their delicate green stalks and dainty yellow blossoms. From the woods, covered by a misty veil of green, the cuckoo’s note rang clear and dainty sweet.
“Cuckoo! cuckoo!” Bridget repeated. She stopped every now and then to snap a cowslip from its stalk.
“They break so crisply, it’s a delight to pick them!” she exclaimed, and tucked the bunch she had gathered into the front of her gown.
“I can’t be altruistic about flowers. I want them. I must have them!” She put her lips down to those on her breast and caressed them.
“Isn’t it delicious—delicious to be in the country in the spring?” she said, raising shining eyes to the Professor. She took his arm, with a little affectionate movement. The smiling glance they exchanged was full of mutual understanding and sympathy. In the wide, sunny meadow Bridget seemed to Carey to be herself again; though she spoke very little to him directly, the intangible barrier between them was, he felt, in some way broken down.
A stile separated the fields from the woods they were to pass through in the walk they had planned.