“Let me have one.”
She took one from the bunch, and he stood watching while she pinned it to her dress. “You may bring me some, now and then,” she said with one of her marvelous smiles. “Don't forget.” And then, as she went on, she touched him upon the hand.
At the touch of her warm, living fingers such a thrill passed through the boy as made him reel. It was something blind and elemental, outside of anything that he had dreamed of in his life. She went on down the hall and left him there, and he had to lean against a table for support.
And all that day he was in a daze—with bursts of rapture sweeping over him. She was interested in him! She had smiled upon him! She had touched his hand!
He went home that evening on purpose to tell Sophie; and the two of them talked about it for hours. He told the story over and over again. And Sophie listened, with her eyes shining and her hands clasped in an ecstasy of delight.
“Oh, Samuel!” she whispered. “I knew it—I knew she'd appreciate you! She was so beautiful—I knew she must be kind and good!”
CHAPTER XI
A week passed, and Samuel did not see his divinity again. He lived upon the memory of their brief interview, and while he trimmed the hedges he was dreaming the most extravagant dreams of rescues and perilous escapes. For the first time he began to find that his work was tedious; it offered so few possibilities of romance! If only he had been her chauffeur, now! Or the guide who escorted her in her tramps about the wilderness! Or the man who ran the wonderful motor-boat that was shaped like a knife blade!