Easton turned about and looked after the others, whose voices, in talk and laughter, came over the bracken with a light, hollow sound that voices have in the woods.
“Oh, don’t snub me!” implored Mrs. Farrell; “I didn’t mean to ask anything wrong. You soldiers are always so queer about the war; one would think you were ashamed of it.”
“It was full of unjust chances,” answered Easton, almost fiercely. “All that I did Gilbert would have done better, and if he had done it he would have got the promotion that I got. I ought to have refused it; it’s my lasting shame and sorrow that I didn’t.” A look of strange dismay and of selfcontempt came into Easton’s face with the last words, which sounded like the expression of an old remorse.
“Oh, excuse me!” said Mrs. Farrell with a quick sympathy of tone. “I’ve made you talk of something— I didn’t think—your men’s friendships are so much more tenderly brought up than women’s, that a woman can scarcely understand,” she added, a little mockingly; but she made obvious haste to get away from the subject that annoyed him.
“Here are tall enough brakes,” she said, “if it’s tallness we’re after; but I think we’d better get ferns. I want to show you a place down here in the hollow where I found some maidenhair the other day. Don’t you think that’s the prettiest of the ferns? Did you ever find it in any part of the South where you were stationed? I should fancy it might be in the Everglades—or some other damp place.”
“I don’t know what it is,” said Easton, absently.
“Not know maidenhair? Then I’ve the chance to show you something novel, as well as very pretty. Come!” She sprang lightly from the wall and swept through the bowing brakes and down the slope of the hollow to a spot where clustering maples, flinging their shadows one upon another, made a cool gloom beneath their boughs, and the delicate maidenhair balanced its crest upon its slender purple stems and trembled in the silent air. “Here, here!” called Mrs. Farrell. “Did you ever see anything lovelier? But doesn’t it seem a pity to pull it? Well, it must die for women, as humming-birds and pheasants do; we can’t look pretty without them, poor things! I’m going to sit down here, Mr. Easton, and you’re going to gather maidenhair for me and show your taste; you haven’t experience in it, but you are to have instinct.”
She sat down on the broad flat top of a rock, and though her seat was in a spot where the slighter texture of the shade let the sunlight flicker through upon her, she gave a slight tremor and shrugged her shoulders. “You must let me have my shawl, Mr. Easton—my poor health, you know; there’s rheumatism and typhoid fever in every breath of this delicious air.”
He went to lay the shawl upon her shoulders reverently, but she dragged it down and adjusted it about her waist in a very much prettier effect. “There, now, give me your hat. One of the penalties that a gentleman pays for the pleasure of going braking with a lady is to have his hat trimmed with ferns and to be made to look silly. You may have your revenge in trimming my hat.” She began to undo the elastic from her hair; but there were hairpins upon which it was entangled, and she dropped her arms from the attempt, and with a quick, “Ah!” she tried to unloose her glove. It was fastened by one of those little clasps which are so hard to undo, and after many attempts she was obliged to look up at Easton in despair.
“May I try to help you?” he dared to ask.