It was like spying out some shy fleeing wood-nymph to see her, with a few long, easy movements, springing and bounding across the stepping-stones of the upper river—or, the petticoat held daintily high, all in a faint flurry of white spray and whiter feet, negotiating the shallow ford at the first Torres Vedras when we were paddling there in the hot days.
Yet, when once across, she never seemed to have "shipped a drop," as Sir Toady Lion asserted in his best naval manner.
Rather, be it said, she gave herself a shake like a scudding swallow that has dipped its wing a little too deep in the pond, and lo! our Elizabeth was dry again. She never had so much as to preen a feather.
They always tell me that I am a little in love with Elizabeth myself, and I am not ashamed of it. Once, from his hiding-place, Hugh John showed me a young dainty fawn come stepping lightly through the wood. I saw it skip airily across the Esk below the second Torres Vedras, ascend the bank in three bounds, walk demurely across the road like a maiden coming out of church, look about her as if gathering her skirts for something daring, and then, with one sidelong bound, swift and light, lo, she was over the high paling and lost in the wood!
Elizabeth Fortinbras would have done it just like that, as gracefully and as unconsciously. But to think of her taking a place in the Donnan's Confectionery shop—surely his good angel had for once forsaken Hugh John—plan-maker to the world in general, and private domestic Solomon!
"Go and ask Elizabeth Fortinbras!" said Hugh John—and he said it as if he had good reason to know that Elizabeth would accept. Though that might only be his usual accent of quiet certainty. You see, Hugh John compels belief. Confidence accrues to his lightest guess, which is not accorded to Sir Toady on his oath. It is a shame that any one should be so favored by nature in the matter of his word. I, being a girl, am suspected of inaccuracy, Sir Toady of "monkeying," and Maid Margaret of knowing nothing about the matter.
But Hugh John may be inaccurate. He may be "monkeying" in secret, and he may know less than any one else about any matter. Nevertheless he is accredited like a plenipotentiary. He moves like Diogenes, his tub unseen about him. A calm certainty accompanies him. He inspires confidence, blind as that of a bank cashier in the multiplication table. All, too, without break, without insistence. To look at, he is just a tall lad, with singularly quiet manners, who looks at you fixedly out of gray eyes very wide apart. Only—you believe him.
But that is the reason why, in my secretest heart, as soon as Hugh John said, "Ask Elizabeth Fortinbras!" I knew that Elizabeth Fortinbras would accept.
I had to ask her myself. Or rather I took Mrs. Donnan with me, who did as she was told, smiling and stammering apologies in the proper places. As for me, I said what Hugh John had advised me to say, in our last long talk together up in the Cave.
Of course it was no use in the world consulting Elizabeth's parents. Her father was lost in dreams of making another fortune by a new and original butter-cooler which would put all others out of the market. Her mother, fretful and fine-ladyish, would declare that she could not do without her. But I knew that it would be an exceedingly good thing for her younger sister to get her nose taken out of the Penny Novelette. If Elizabeth went, she would have to do the housework, and so might yet save her soul—though as yet she had shown no signs of possessing any.