Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/109



I entered the wood path through the birches that run down to my own cottage, I thought I saw a boyish youngish figure slipping among the trees to the eastward. A moment later, I met Dorothy walking demurely up the path, with a book in her hand, closed upon one finger.

"Watching the sun set?" I asked, diplomatically.

"No," she said, "watching him disappear."

"Watching whom disappear?" I inquired, being invited.

"Oh, a boy that I like. We've been reading one of mother's new books. It's about a girl, Deirdre, who didn't want to marry a king, because there was a boy that she liked very much better—in all ways. And so they ran away and lived in the woods—and died happily."

"Oho!" I exclaimed. "I suspect the happiness of their death has been greatly exaggerated. It seemed to me rather dreadful. It's James Stephens's version, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Dorothy, and turning the golden