"Thanks to your honour's kindness," said the woman, her eyes always turned from him, "he is well-nigh recovered. For shame of yourself!" she added, shaking the child.
"Nay, nay," said Jeremy kindly. "'Tis not the urchin's fault that he met a bogey in broad daylight."
He strolled along the river bank, pleased at his encounter. In that little backwater of the world where he had lived secluded for ten years folks had learned to suffer him—nay, more, to respect him: and though they seldom looked him in the face their words were gentle and friendly. He could even jest at his own misfortune.
"God is good," he murmured as he walked with head bent down and hands behind his back, "and the earth is full of His goodness. Yet if He in His mercy could only give me a companion in my loneliness, as He gives to every peasant, bird and beast——"
A sigh ended the sentence. He was young and not always able to control the squabble between sex and piety. The words had scarcely passed his lips, however, when he discerned a female figure seated on the bank, some fifty yards away. His first impulse—an impulse which the habit of years would, on ordinary occasions, have rendered imperative—was to make a wide detour round the meadows; but this evening the spirit of mild revolt took possession of him and guided his steps in the direction of the lady—for lady he perceived her to be when he drew a little nearer.
She wore a flowered muslin dress cut open at the neck, and her arms, bare to the elbows, were white and shapely. A peach-blossom of a face appeared below the mob-cap bound by a cherry-coloured ribbon, and as Jeremy came within speaking distance her dark-blue eyes were fixed on him fearlessly. Jeremy halted and looked at her, while she looked at Jeremy. His heart beat wildly. The miracle of miracles had happened—the hopeless, impossible thing that he had prayed for in rebellious hours for so many years, ever since he had realised that the world held such a thing as the joy and the blessing of woman's love. A girl looked at him smilingly, frankly in the face, without a quiver of repulsion—and a girl more dainty and beautiful than any he had seen before. Then, as he stared, transfixed like a person in a beatitude, into her eyes, something magical occurred to Jeremy. The air was filled with the sound of fairy harps of which his own tingling nerves from head to foot were the vibrating strings. Jeremy fell instantaneously in love.
"Will you tell me, sir," she said in a musical voice—the music of the spheres to Jeremy—"will you tell me how I can reach the house of Mistress Wotherspoon?"
Jeremy took off his three-cornered hat and made a sweeping bow.
"Why, surely, madam," said he, pointing with his stick; "'tis yonder red roof peeping through the trees only three hundred yards distant."
"You are a gentleman," said the girl quickly.