Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/151

139 gone five or six yards my heart was up in my throat at the sudden thought of—Rosy! I turned back at once. We met face to face, she smiling up into mine, I looking with a strange graveness into hers.

'Well,' she said, 'you were in a hurry!' We were walking on together, I taking one stride to her two. It seemed to me remarkable somehow, this meeting. We had not shaken hands. I did not know what to say. We walked on together for a little in silence. Then I began: 'I am very glad to see you. And I hope you are well. If you have taken walks, as you told me you would, then I am sure you are better than you were when I left you.'

We talked of general things that did not interest me or, I think, her much, till we came to the corner of Maitland Street. Then ensued questions and explanations, and, in about five minutes. Rosy returned from her visit to No. 3, full of the beautiful rose I had given her.

'Beautiful rose?' I said. '… How do you know I gave it to you?' 'Because,' she answered, ' who else would?'

She was ready for the walk now. We set off at once, in a half-mechanical way Park-wards, beginning to talk like two children.

All at once:

'Here's your locket!' she said, taking it from inside her coat, and holding it out, small and round and silver.

'Nay, yours,' I said, 'not mine.'

'You gave it me, though.'

'I did. That made it yours.'

'But it was yours before that, or how could you have given it me?' I acquiesced, with the reflection that Adam must have had some trouble to get an authentic account of the eating of the historic apple.

'What are you laughing at?' said Rosy.

'Have you forgotten the Swallow Song?'

'Forgotten it? O my gracious, no!—

What are you laughing at?'