Its
only light came through a small window shaded with shrubs and
ivy, which stood open, and let in the scents of bud and blossom,
weaving a net of sweetness in the gloom, through which, like a
silver thread, shot the twittering song of a bird, which had
inherited the gathered carelessness and bliss of a long ancestry
in God's aviary.
Godfrey came softly to the door, which he found standing ajar,
and peeped in. There stood Letty, warm and bright in the middle
of the dusky coolness. She had changed her dress since he saw
her, and now, in a pink-rosebud print, with the sleeves tucked
above her elbows, was skimming the cream in a great red-brown
earthen pan. He pushed the door a little, and, at its screech
along the uneven floor, Letty's head turned quickly on her lithe
neck, and she saw Godfrey's brown face and kind blue eyes where
she had never seen them before. In his hand glowed the book: some
of the stronger light from behind him fell on it, and it caught
her eyes.
"Letty," he said, "I have just come upon this book in my library:
would you care to have it?"
"You don't mean to keep for my own, Cousin Godfrey?" cried Letty,
in sweet, childish fashion, letting the skimmer dive like a coot
to the bottom of the milk-pool, and hastily wiping her hands in
her apron. Her face had flushed rosy with pleasure, and grew
rosier and brighter still as she took the rich morocco-bound
thing from Godfrey's hand into her own.
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