Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/124

 was some way of earning an easy living without making himself the bound slave of business or a profession; for he felt a high contempt for all the money-grubbers and day labourers whom he saw crowding through the streets of the city, as blind as driven animals, in the pursuit of trade or patronage. He resolved that he would find a way to live as free as a boy and as independent as a man, avoiding all ambitious cares or worries, content to enjoy a modest comfort without great luxury, love her, and be happy. Pending his discovery of the necessary means to that end, he perfected his conception of the end itself in his imagination, and spent hours picturing her as she would look when she stood to meet him in the door of their little home at sunset—or when she sat at the piano playing to him of an evening with the lamplight shining on her hair—or when she poured the breakfast coffee with a dainty turn of wrist and passed the cup to him, smiling beautifully across the roses that were always fresh in a vase on the table, as they were always fresh in her cheeks.

Meanwhile, their walks together were the most adventurous and romantic meetings. One day it was snowing so heavily that she had brought an umbrella, and he held it over her, keeping so close to her that they were almost arm in arm, shut in with her under that small cover by the storm, and smiling at nothing blissfully. Then there was the day when the laces of one of her heavy winter shoes became untied, and he knelt down beside a doorstep to refasten them for her, and she—in order to steady herself while she stood on one foot—put her hand on his shoulder and