"'Tis, too--ain't that _you_, Horsehead?"
"How do you do, boys!" I answered loftily, and they passed on appeased.
"Do they call you Horsehead?" she asked.
"Oh, yes!" I replied brightly. "It's a funny name, isn't it?" and I
laughed murderously.
"Yes, it's very funny."
"Well, I'll have to be going now. Good night!"
"Good night!"
And she left me staring after her, the whole big world and its starry
heavens crying madly within me to be said to her.
CHAPTER IV
DREAMS AND WAKINGS
The incomparable Lucy Tait was still but a star to be adored in her
distant heaven when I went away from Little Arcady to learn some things
not taught in the faded brick schoolhouse. It was six years before I
came back; six years that I lived in a crowded place where people had no
easy ways nor front yards with geranium beds, nor knew enough of their
neighbors either to love or to hate them.
I came back to the Little Country a mannish being, learned in the law,
and with the right sort of laugh in my heart for the old school days,
for the simplicity of my boy's love.
But, there and then, with her old sweet want of pity, did she smite me
again. Through and through she smote the man as she had smitten the boy.
Pages:
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67