“Spread the baby’s rug!” I cried to Bonnie; “here is a little seat made in the roots for this very day. Pull him a branch of apple blossoms—so. And now run away, child, and amuse yourself. The baby and I are going to make an apple-blossom pie.”
Bonnie, hesitating, at my more peremptory bidding went away. I have no idea whether she was caught up among the branches by friendly hands or whether the nearest tree trunk hospitably opened to receive her. But there, in May, with the world gone off in another direction, the baby and I sat alone.
“O—o-o-o-o—” said the baby, in a kind of lyric understanding of the situation.
I held him close. These hours of Arcady are hard to win for the sheltering of dreams.
Voices, sounding beyond a momentary rain of petals, roused me. Enid’s baby smiled up in my eyes but I saw no one, though the voices murmured on as if the dryads had forgotten me and were idly speaking from tree to tree. Then I caught from the orchard arbour Mrs. Trempleau’s darting laugh. It was as if some one had kindled among the apple blossoms a torch of perfumed wood.
“I am sailing on Wednesday,” I heard her saying in a voice abruptly brought to sadness. “Ah, my friend, if I might believe you. Would there indeed be happiness for you there with me, counting the cost?”
It was of course Hobart Eddy who answered quite, I will be bound, as I would have said that Hobart Eddy would speak of love: with fine deliberation, as another man would speak the commonplaces, possibly with his little half bow over the lady’s hand, a very courtier of Love’s plaisance.
She replied with that perpetual little snare of her laughter laid like a spider web from one situation to the next.
“Come with me then,” she challenged him; “let us find this land where it is always Spring.”