"Stand off!" she said, rapidly opening her parasol and interposing it between them. "Another step nearer--ay, even another word of endearment--and I shall be compelled--nay, forced," she added in a lower voice, "to remove this parasol, lest it should be crushed and ruined!"
"I see," he said gloomily, "you have been reading novels; but so have I, and the same ones! Nevertheless, I intended only to tell you that I hoped you would always find me a kind friend."
She shut her parasol up with a snap. "And I only intended to tell thee that my heart was given to another."
"You INTENDED--and now?"
"Is it the 'kind friend' who asks?"
"If it were not?"
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Ah!"
"Oh!"
"But thee loves another?" she said, toying with her cup.
He attempted to toy with his, but broke it. A man lacks delicacy in this kind of persiflage. "You mean I am loved by another," he said bluntly.
"You dare to say that!" she said, flashing, in spite of her prim demeanor.
"No, but YOU did just now! You said your sister loved me!"
"Did I?" she said dreamily. "Dear! dear! That's the trouble of trying to talk like Mr. Blank's delightful dialogues. One gets so mixed!"
"Yet you will be a sister to me?" he said. "'Tis an old American joke, but 'twill serve."
There was a long silence.
"Had thee not better go to sister Dorcas? She is playing with the cows," said Jane plaintively.
"You forget," he returned gravely, "that, on page 27 of the novel we have both read, at this point he is supposed to kiss her."
She had forgotten, but they both remembered in time. At this moment a scream came faintly from the distance. They both started, and rose.
"It is sister Dorcas," said Jane, sitting down again and pouring out another cup of tea. "I have always told her that one of those Swiss cows would hook her."
Paul stared at her with a strange revulsion of feeling. "I could save Dorcas," he muttered to himself, "in less time than it takes to describe." He paused, however, as he reflected that this would depend entirely upon the methods of the writer of this description.
"I could rescue her! I have only to take the first clothes-line that I find, and with that knowledge and skill with the lasso which I learned in the wilds of America, I could stop the charge of the most furious ruminant. I will!" and without another word he turned and rushed off in the direction of the sound.
. . . . . .
He had not gone a hundred yards before he paused, a little bewildered. To the left could still be seen the cobalt lake with the terraced background; to the right the rugged mountains. He chose the latter. Luckily for him a cottager's garden lay in his path, and from a line supported by a single pole depended the homely linen of the cottager. To tear these garments from the line was the work of a moment (although it represented the whole week's washing), and hastily coiling the rope dexterously in his hand, he sped onward. Already panting with exertion and excitement, a few roods farther he was confronted with a spectacle that left him breathless.
A woman--young, robust, yet gracefully formed--was running ahead of him, driving before her with an open parasol an animal which he instantly recognized as one of that ****** yet treacherous species most feared by the ***--known as the "Moo Cow."
For a moment he was appalled by the spectacle. But it was only for a moment! Recalling his manhood and her weakness, he stopped, and bracing his foot against a stone, with a graceful flourish of his lasso around his head, threw it in the air. It uncoiled slowly, sped forward with unerring precision, and missed! With the single cry of "Saved!" the fair stranger sank fainting in his arms! He held her closely until the color came back to her pale face. Then he quietly disentangled the lasso from his legs.
"Where am I?" she said faintly.
"In the same place," he replied, slowly but firmly. "But," he added, "you have changed!"
She had, indeed, even to her dress. It was now of a vivid brick red, and so much longer in the skirt that it seemed to make her taller. Only her hat remained the same.
"Yes," she said, in a low, reflective voice and a disregard of her previous dialect, as she gazed up in his eyes with an eloquent lucidity, "I have changed, Paul! I feel myself changing at those words you uttered to Jane. There are moments in a woman's life that man knows nothing of; moments bitter and cruel, sweet and merciful, that change her whole being; moments in which the ****** girl becomes a worldly woman; moments in which the slow procession of her years is never noted--except by another woman! Moments that change her outlook on the world and her relations to it--and her husband's relations! Moments when the maid becomes a wife, the wife a widow, the widow a re-married woman, by a ******, swift illumination of the fancy. Moments when, wrought upon by a single word--a look--an emphasis and rising inflection, all logical sequence is cast away, processes are lost--inductions lead nowhere.
Moments when the inharmonious becomes harmonious, the indiscreet discreet, the inefficient efficient, and the inevitable evitable.
I mean," she corrected herself hurriedly--"You know what I mean!
If you have not felt it you have read it!"
"I have," he said thoughtfully. "We have both read it in the same novel. She is a fine writer."
"Ye-e-s." She hesitated with that slight resentment of praise of another woman so delightful in her ***. "But you have forgotten the Moo Cow!" and she pointed to where the distracted animal was careering across the lawn towards the garden.
"You are right," he said, "the incident is not yet closed. Let us pursue it."
They both pursued it. Discarding the useless lasso, he had recourse to a few well-aimed epithets. The infuriated animal swerved and made directly towards a small fountain in the centre of the garden. In attempting to clear it, it fell directly into the deep cup-like basin and remained helplessly fixed, with its fore-legs projecting uneasily beyond the rim.