Page:Stevenson and Quiller-Couch - St Ives .djvu/456

 But I did not care to wait; and why? Because, not fifteen yards from me she stood!—she, my Flora, my goddess, bare-headed, swept by chequers of morning sunshine and green shadows, with the dew on her sandal shoes and the lap of her morning gown appropriately heaped with flowers—with tulips, scarlet, yellow, and striped. And confronting her, with his back towards me and a remembered patch between the armholes of his stable-waistcoat, Robie the gardener rested both hands on his spade and expostulated.

"But I like to pick my tulips leaves and all, Robie!"

"Aweel, miss; it's clean ruinin' the bulbs, that's all I say to you."

And that was all I waited to hear. As he bent over and resumed his digging I shook a branch of the beech with both hands and set it swaying. She heard the rustle and glanced up and, spying me, uttered a gasping little cry.

"What ails ye, miss?" Robie straightened himself instanter; but she had whipped right-about face and was gazing towards the kitchen garden:

"Isn't that a child among the arti—the strawberry-beds, I mean?"

He cast down his spade and ran. She turned, let the tulips fall at her feet, and, ah! her second cry of gladness, and her heavenly blush as she stretched out both arms to me. It was all happening over again—with the difference that now my arms too were stretched out.

Robie had run a dozen yards perhaps, when either the noise I made in scrambling off the wall, or some recollection of having been served in this way before, brought him to a halt. At any rate he turned round, and just in time to witness our embrace.