"Meg, I rather like young men with rippled hair," said Miss Hennie
Penny, as they passed the Carrefour and strolled between the dewy
hedges towards La Tour, with larks by the dozen bursting their hearts
in the freshness of the morning above them.
"Do you, dear? I thought you scorned young men?"
"As a class, yes!--Especially the Cambridge variety. But not in
particular. I make an exception in this case."
"So good of you!" murmured Margaret in her best company manner.
"Why did you never tell me how nice he was?"
"Tell you how nice he was? I don't remember ever discussing him with
you in any shape or form whatever."
"Not to say discussed exactly, but you can't deny that you've
mentioned him occasionally."
"So I have William Shakespeare and Alfred Tennyson--"
"And Charles Pixley!"
"That's quite different--"
"You're right, my dear. This is a horse of quite another colour. An
awfully decent colour too. I'm glad you appreciate it. He's as brown
as a gipsy and not an ounce of flab about him. Charles Pixley is
mostly flab--"
"Don't be rude, Hen. You don't know Charles. And do drop your school
slang--"
"Can't, my child. It's part of my holiday, so none of your pi-jaw! If
you want me to enjoy myself you must let me have my head. You can't
imagine how awfully good it tastes when you've been doing your best to
choke girls off it for a year or two. It's one of the outward and
visible signs of emancipation. This is another!" and she sprang up the
high turf bank of the orchard of La Tour and danced a breakdown on it,
and then jumped back into the road with ballooning skirts, to the
intense amazement of old Mrs. Hamon of Le Fort, who had just come
round the corner to draw sweet water from the La Tour well.
"People will think you're crazy," remonstrated Margaret.
"So I am, and you're my keeper, though it's supposed to be the other
way about. The air of Sark has got into my head. What a quaint bonnet
that old lady has! I wonder what colour it was in its infancy.
Good-morning, ma'am! Isn't this a glorious day?" And old Madame Hamon
murmured a word and passed hastily on lest worse should befall.
"Hennie, be sensible for a minute or two. I want you to consider
something seriously."
"Sensible, if you like, Chummie, for 'tis my nature to.
Serious?--Never! How could one, with those larks bursting themselves
in a sky like that? And did you ever see hedges like these in all your
life? What's it all about?--Ripply-Hair?"
"Yes. Don't you see how awkward the whole matter is--"
"Awkward for Charles Pixley maybe. I don't see that anybody else need
worry themselves thin about it."
"I'm not thinking of Mr. Pixley. It's--"
"Ripply-Hair? Well, that's all right! Jolly sight nicer to think about
him. I like his eyes too. There's something in them that seems to
invite one's confidence. Perhaps you haven't noticed it? If I had a
father-confessor--which, thank's-be, I haven't, and a jolly good thing
for him!--I should stipulate for him having eyes just like that.
Ripply hair too, I think. Yes. I should insist on his having hair just
like Mr. Graeme's."
They had strolled along past Le Fort till the road lost itself in a
field above Banquette, and there they came to an involuntary stand and
stood gazing.
Before them, the long, broken slopes of the Eperquerie swept down from
the heights to the sea, one vast blaze of flaming gorse--a tumultuous
torrent of solid sunshine stayed suddenly in its course. And, in below
the sunshine of the gorse, where rough Mother Earth should have been,
there lay instead a soft sunset cloud, the tender cream-yellow and
green of myriads of primroses and the just uncurling fronds of the
bracken--primroses in such unbroken sheets and masses as to give a
weird effect of remoteness and impalpability to that which was solid
and close at hand.
"Wonderful!" murmured Margaret.
"Glorious!" murmured Miss Penny. "Is it really old Mother Earth we're
looking at?"
"No, dear! It's a bit of the sky fallen down there and the sun has
rolled over it into the sea. See the bits of him in the wavelets! And
did you ever in your life see a green like that water below the
rocks?"
"Sky and sun above, sun and sky below!--with trimmings of liquid
emerald and sapphire, shot with white and gold. Meg, my child, this is
a long way from No. 1 Melgrave Square."
"A long, long way!" assented Margaret thoughtfully. And then, to take
advantage of her companion's comparative soberness through the
stirring of her feelings,--"Hennie, do you think we ought to stop?"
"Stop?" and Miss Penny fronted her squarely. "Stop? Why, we've only
just come. What's disgruntling you, Chummie?"
"Can't you see how awkward it is?"
"Well,--that depends--"
"No one would believe it was all pure accident."
"Perhaps it isn't," said Miss Penny oracularly.
"Why, what do you mean?" said Margaret, bristling in her turn.
"Oh, I'm imputing no guile, my child. I'm miles away up past that kind
of thing. What I mean is this--perhaps it was meant to be, and you
couldn't help yourselves. Now if that should be the case, it would be
flying in the face of Providence to go and upset it all. What are your
feelings towards him?"
"Feelings? I have no feelings--"
"Oh yes, you have, my child. You're not made of marble, though you can
look it when you try. Why, I have myself. I like him--the little I've
seen of him--and in spite of the fact that he caught me doing my hair,
which is enough to turn anyone against anyone. I shall probably like
him still more the better I get to know him. What have you against
him?"
"I've nothing whatever against him. I--"
"Then, my dear, we'll sit tight. If anyone should go it's he, since
he's been here a month, and we've only been one day. But if he goes it
will only be because you make him. You've no ill-will towards him?"
"I've no feeling at all about him, except that it's awkward his being
here."
"Then we'll just put the blame on Providence, and sit tight, as I said
before. I'll see you come to no harm, my child. I could make that
young man, or any young man, fly to the other end of the island by
simply looking at him."
"Think so, dear?" and Margaret, the issue being decided for her, came
back to equanimity.
"Sure!" said Miss Penny.