Page:Tales of the long bow.pdf/110

 out everything in clear colours like a child's toy-book; and standing with his hands spread out and his wisps of yellow hair brushed in all directions by the bushes, he recalled an undignified memory of Shock—Headed Peter.

"I felt I must speak to you before I went," he said. "I'm going away, not exactly on active service, but on business—on very active business. I feel like the fellows did when they went to the war and what they wanted to do first . I am aware that a proposal over a pig-sty is not so symbolical to some as to me, but really and truly  I don't know whether I mentioned it, but you may be aware that I worship you."

Joan Hardy was quite aware of it; but the conventionalities in her case were like concentric castle-walls; the world-old conventions of the countryside. There was in them the stiff beauty of old country dances and the slow and delicate needlework of a peasantry. Of all the ladies whose figures must be faintly traced in the tapestry of these frivolous tales of chivalry, the most reticent and dignified was the one who was not in the worldly sense a lady at all.

She stood looking at him in silence, and he at her; as the lift of her head had some general suggestion of a bird, the line of her profile had