Page:Milady at Arms (1937).pdf/346

 "Jerry, ye be the only one, now, who calls me Sally! Prithee, promise ye will always call me that!"

"An ye like," said Jerry, nodding.

There was a little silence, during which the girl's eyes followed some white sea gulls.

"Why the doldrums?" asked Jerry, watching her and wondering if it were from the sky or the water that Sally got the blue of her long-lashed eyes. "Ye look as though ye were gazing back at your last friend, instead o' going—home!"

"Home!" The girl gazed unseeingly ahead of her. "Tell me," she whispered then, "what home looks like, Jerry!"

Jerry fell into her mood. "Your home, Sally, is in a great park, wi' high trimmed hedges all about it, a fine place wi' spacious lawns and gardens and tall, stately trees. And i' the loveliest garden o' all there is a little lake on which glide long-necked swans, while, across the near-by terraces, ye may see peacocks strutting."

"Jerry," Sally turned to him abruptly from her daydreams, tis all so strange and new to me. Only you, who knew me at the Mountain, can realize how strange it all be, like—like—a fairy story. This calling me milady—why, half the time, I know not they mean me!"

"Always," Jerry softly, "I ha' called ye" He stopped self-consciously, for boyhood lay not far behind him.