CHAPTER III.
THE GERM OF A PASSION.
A bonnie little Puritan maid, Mistress Garde Merrill, stood in the open doorway at her home, fervently hugging her kitten. The sunlight seemed almost like beaten gold, so tangibly did it lay upon the house, the vines that climbed the wall, and the garden full of old-fashioned flowers.
A few leaves, which had escaped from the trees, in a longing to extend their field of romping, were being whirled about in a brisk zephyr that spun in a corner. A sense of warmth and fragrance made all the world seem wantoning in its own loveliness.
Little Garde, watching the frolic of the leaves, and thinking them pretty elves and fairies, dancing, presently looked up into the solemn visage of a passing citizen, who had paused at the gate.
“Mistress Merrill,” he said, gravely, after a moment’s inspection of the bright, enchanting little face, “your eyes have not the Puritan spirit of meekness.” Thereupon he departed on his way, sadly shaking his head.
Garde’s eyes, in all truth, were dancing right joyously; and dancing was not accounted a Puritan devotion. Such brown, light-ensnaring eyes could not, however, constrain themselves to melancholy. No more could the apple-red of her smooth, round cheeks retreat from the ardor of the sun. As for her hair, like strands on strands of spun mahogany, no power on earth could have disentangled its nets wherein the rays of golden light had meshed and intermeshed themselves. In her brightness of color, with her black and white kitten on her arm, the child was a dainty little human jewel.
She was watching a bee and a butterfly when a shadow fell again into the yard, among the flowers, at the entrance. Garde felt her attention drawn and centered at once. She found herself looking not so much at a bareheaded boy, as fairly into the depths of his very blue and steadfast eyes.
The visitor stood there with his hands clasping two of the pickets of which the gate was fashioned. He had seen everything in the garden at one glance, but he was looking at Garde. His eyes began laughingly, then seriously, but always frankly, to ask a favor.
“I prithee come in,” said Garde, as one a little struck with wonder.
The boy came in. Garde met him in the path and gave him her kitten. He took it, apparently because she gave it, and not because he was inordinately fond of cats. It seemed to Garde that she knew this boy, and yet he had on a suit that suggested a young sailor, and she had never made the acquaintance of any sailors whatsoever. If he would only look elsewhere than at her face, she thought, perhaps she could remember.