'Not quite,' she said, as though answering a question she had just been putting to herself. 'There's not enough wind.'
'Then do you like wind?' I said in surprise and delight.
'Oh, I love it!' she said rapturously. 'I can't be quite happy without wind, can you? I like to run up the hills in the wind and sing to it. That's when I am happiest. I couldn't live long without the wind.'
Now it had been a deep-rooted conviction of mine that none but the gulls and I really and truly liked the wind. 'Fishermen are muffs,' I used to say; 'they talk about the wind as though it were an enemy, just because it drowns one or two of 'em now and then. Anybody can like sunshine; muffs can like sunshine; it takes a gull or a man to like the wind!'
Such had been my egotism. But here was a girl who liked it! We reached the gate of the garden in front of Tom's cottage, and then we both stopped, looking over the neatly-kept flower-garden and the white thatched cottage behind it, up the walls of which the grape-vine leaves were absorbing the brilliance of the sunlight and softening it. Wynne was a gardener as well as an organist, and had gardens both in the front and at the back of his cottage, which was surrounded by fruit-trees. Drunkard as he was, his two passions, music and gardening, saved him from absolute degradation and ruin. His garden was beautifully kept, and I have seen him deftly pruning his vines when in such a state of drink that it was wonderful how he managed to hold a priming-knife. Winifred opened the gate, and we passed in. Wynne's little terrier, Snap, came barking to meet us.
There was an air of delicious peacefulness about the garden. This also tended to soften that hardness of temper which only cripples who have once rejoiced in their strength can possibly know, I hope.
'I like to see you look so,' said the little girl, as I melted entirely under these sweet influences. 'You looked so cross before that I was nearly afraid of you.'
And she took hold of my hand, not hesitatingly, but frankly. The little fingers clasped mine. I looked at them. They were much more sun-tanned than her face. The little rosy nails were shaped like filbert nuts.
'Why were you not quite afraid of me?' I asked.
'Because,' said she, 'under the crossness I saw that you had great love-eyes like Snap's all the while. I saw it!' she said, and laughed with delight at her great wisdom. Then she said with a sudden gravity, 'You didn't mean to make my father cry, did you, little boy?'