第47章

"Rather beg than work, wouldn't he? I call him Micawber because he's always waiting for something to turn up."Joan wheeled round.To hear a stranger's voice in a place that was peculiarly hers and Martin's amazed and offended her.It was unbelievable.

A girl was sitting in the long grass, hatless, with her hands clasped round her knees.The sun lit up her bobbed hair that shone like brass and had touched her white skin with a warm finger.

Wistful and elfish, sitting like Puck on a toadstool, she might have slipped out of some mossy corner of the woods to taste the breeze and speculate about life.She wore a butter-colored sport shirt wide open at the neck and brown cord riding breeches and puttees.Slight and small boned and rather thin she could easily have passed for a delicate boy or, except for something at the back of her eyes that showed that she had not always lived among trees, for Peter Pan's brother of whom the world had never heard.

Few people would have recognized in this spring maid the Tootles of Broadway and that rabbit warren in West Forty-sixth Street.The dew of the country had washed her face and lips, and the choir voices of Martin's big cathedral had put peace and gentleness into her expression.

She ran her eyes with frank admiration over the unself-consciously patrician Joan in her immaculate town clothes and let them rest finally on a face that seemed to her to be the most attractive that she had ever seen, for all that its expression made her want to scramble to her feet and take to her heels.But she controlled herself and sat tight, summoned her native impertinence to the rescue and gave a friendly nod.After all, it was a free country.

There were no princesses knocking about.

"You don't look as if you were a pal of squirrels," she said.

Joan's resentment at the unexpected presence of this interloper only lasted a moment.It gave way almost immediately before interest and curiosity and liking,--even, for a vague reason, sympathy.

"I've known this one all his life," she said."His father and mother were among my most intimate friends and, what's more, his grandfather and grandmother relied on me to help them out in bad times."The duet of laughter echoed among the trees.

With a total lack of dignity the squirrel retired and stood, with erect tail, behind a tuft of coarse grass, wondering what had happened.

"It's a gift to be country and look town," said Tootles, with unconcealed flattery."It's having as many ancestors as the squirrels, I suppose.According to the rules I ought to feel awkward, oughtn't I?""Why?"

"Well, I'm trespassing.I saw it in your eyes.'Pon my soul it never occurred to me before.Shall I try and make a conventional exit or may I stay if I promise not to pinch the hill? This view is better than face massage.It rubs out all the lines.My word, but it's good to be alive up here!"The mixture of cool cheek and ecstasy, given forth in the patois of the London suburbs, amused Joan.Here was a funny, whimsical, pathetic, pretty little thing, she thought--queerly wise, too, and with all about her a curious appeal for friendship and kindness.

"Stay, of course," she said."I'm very glad you like my hill.Use it as often as you can." She sat down on the flat-topped piece of rock that she had so often shared with Martin.There was a sense of humanity about this girl that had the effect of a magnet.She inspired confidence, as Martin did.

"Thanks most awfully," said Tootles."You're kinder than you think to let me stay here.And I'm glad you're going to sit down for a bit.I like you, and I don't mind who knows it.""And I like you," said Joan.

And they both laughed again, feeling like children.It was a characteristic trick of Fate's to bring about this meeting.