Page:The Happy Hypocrite - Beerbohm - 1897.pdf/42

 “You need never dance again,” said her lover. “I am rich and I will pay them to release you. You shall dance only for me. Sweetheart, it cannot be much more than noon. Let us go into the town, while there is time, and you shall be made my bride, and I your bridegroom, this very day. Why should you and I be lonely?”

“I do not know,” she said.

So they walked back through the wood, taking a narrow path which Jenny said would lead them quickest to the village. And, as they went, they came to a tiny cottage, with a garden that was full of Mowers. The old woodman was leaning over its paling, and he nodded to them as they passed.

“I often used to envy the woodman,” said Jenny, “living in that dear little cottage.”

“Let us live there, then,” said Lord George. And he went back and asked the old man if he were not unhappy, living there alone.

“‘’ [sic]Tis a poor life here for me,” the old man answered. “No folk come to the wood, except little children, now and again, to play, or lovers like you. But they seldom notice me. And in winter I am alone with Jack Frost! Old men love merrier company than that. Oh!