"I am glad I am not a London beauty!"
"There are more disagreeable positions," Anne said reflectively. "Now,
if you had said a London beauty with a heart--"
"Have you no heart?" Millie asked impulsively.
"Not I! What does duty for it is a poor little chippy dried-up thing,
which may be reckoned on never to give me an ache or a pain." She
sprang to her feet. "Come! The farm! I am not going to let you off
the farm."
No bridge could they find, and there was nothing for it but to retrace
their steps. Down the hill-side, through the entangling greenery, they
plunged, breathless and laughing, and found themselves at last
overlooking the fjord, without any means of crossing the _fos_. Anne,
undaunted, spied a boat on the fjord rowed by a boy; her signals brought
it to shore. The boy readily agreed to row them to a higher point, but,
this carried out, he refused to wait for them.
"Never mind! We are here!" Anne cried, springing out. She followed a
rough path, and presently pounced on wild strawberries.
A man was digging. Seeing them gathering strawberries, he made signs
that they were welcome to the cherries which hung temptingly from his
trees. He bent the boughs down; Anne picked and brought crimson
handfuls to Millie lying on the grass. The warm sun shone, a little
stone-chat scolded from a rail, it was all calm, restful, and fragrant
with hay. They went up the narrow path towards the farm; the way was
overhung with cherry-trees, and a vagrant stream of water, which played
truant from the fall, dashed down, flinging lovely spray over the waving
grasses. The farm dominated the fjord; fold after fold of blue hills
stretched away, the white water at their feet, and desolate-looking
islands staring up at the sunshine, which scarcely softened their black
outlines. Anne's mood changed, she grew silent, and silently they went
their way down the little path, till they reached the man still digging
his patch of ground.
Millie, tired, inquired how she proposed getting home.
"He will take us in his boat. I asked him as I picked the cherries."
Going back, it appeared as if the waters had grown yet more still and
glassy. Each patch of snow, each outburst of green, each violet shadow,
sent a lovely repetition of itself into the world below. The boat
slipped dreamily through them, only the lap of the oars, and the faint
and distant murmur of the waterfall, breaking the silence. One after
another the little green promontories dropped behind, the white church
of Odde and the clustering houses took form, a boat passed them. Anne
looked up.
"This is not the time for commonplaces, yet they haunt me," she said
impatiently. "I--I--I--I am the commonplace, and I have stumbled into a
thick mist of doubts and questionings. Tell me, are you always direct?
and certain that right is right and wrong wrong?"
Millie coloured, hesitated. Such an appeal confused her. Anne went
on--
"My rules are not so ready. Something else steps in and hoodwinks me,
though I dare say it is true that I offer my eyes for the bandage. What
I complain of is that when I do my best to walk straight--according to
my lights--I am the more cried out upon. Your Mr Wareham, now, acts
Rhadamanthus, yet what does he know? How can he pretend to judge what
motives influenced me, and whether they were bad or good? Has he
discussed them with you?"