Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/326

318 “Like Eve in a meadow in Eden—and Adam’s shadow somewhere on the grass,” said I.

“No—no Adam,” she asserted, frowning slightly, and laughing.

“Who ever would want streets of gold,” Emily was saying to me, “when you can have a field of cowslips! Look at that hedgebottom that gets the South sun—one stream and glitter of buttercups.”

“Those Jews always had an eye to the filthy lucre—they even made Heaven out of it,” laughed Lettie, and, turning to him, she said, “Don’t you wish we were wild—hark, like wood-pigeons—or larks—or, look, like peewits? Shouldn’t you love flying and wheeling and sparkling and—courting in the wind?” She lifted her eyelids, and vibrated the question. He flushed, bending over the ground.

“Look,” he said, “here’s a larkie’s.”

Once a horse had left a hoofprint in the soft meadow; now the larks had rounded, softened the cup, and had laid there three dark-brown eggs. Lettie sat down and leaned over the nest; he leaned above her. The wind running over the flower heads, peeped in at the little brown buds, and bounded off again gladly. The big clouds sent messages to them down the shadows, and ran in raindrops to touch them.

“I wish,” she said, “I wish we were free like that. If we could put everything safely in a little place in the earth—couldn’t we have a good time as well as the larks?”

“I don’t see,” said he, “why we can’t.”

“Oh—but I can’t—you know we can’t”—and she looked at him fiercely.