SPRING was in Our Square when I first saw the two of them. They sat on a
bench under the early lilacs. It must have been the beginning of it all
for them, I think, for there was still a dim terror in her face, and he
gestured like one arguing stormily. At the last she smiled and drew a
cluster of the lilac bloom down to her cheek. It was not deeper-hued
than her eyes, nor fresher than her youth. They rose and passed me,
alone on my bench, and I, who am wise in courtships, having watched so
many bud and blossom on the public seats of Our Square, saw that this
was no wooing, but some other persuasion, though what I could not guess.
So those two drifted out of sight; out of mind, too, for life in our
remote, unconsidered, and slum-circled little park is a complex and
swiftly changing actuality, and it crowds in with many pressures upon a
half-idle old pedagogue like myself. It was the Little Red Doctor
who, weeks later, recalled the episode, one blistering evening of the
summer's end. He captured me as I emerged from the “penny-circulator”
with my thumb in a book.
“What are we ruining our eyes with to-night?” he demanded.