Furze the Cruel. Trevena John

scattered all over your nose."

      "Freckles," laughed Boodles. "Aubrey, you silly! Calling my ugly freckles gold-dust! Why, I hate them. When I look in the glass I say to myself: 'Boodles, you're a nasty little spotted toad.'"

      "They are just lovely," declared the boy. "They are little bits of sunshine that have dropped on you and stuck there."

      "I'm not sticky."

      "You are. Sticky with sweetness."

      "What a dear stupid thing!" sighed Boodles. "Let me kiss your lovely pink and white girl's face – there – and there – and there."

      "Boodles, dear, I haven't got a girl's face," protested Aubrey.

      "Oh, but you have, my boy. It's just like a girl's – only prettier. If I was you, and you was me – that sounds rather shocking grammar, but it don't matter – every one would say: 'Look at that ugly boy with that boodle-oodle, lovely, butiful girl.' There! I've squeezed every bit of breath out of him," cried Boodles.

      There was a certain amount left, as she soon discovered; enough to smother her.

      "If you hadn't got golden hair, and freckles, I should never have fallen in love with you," declared the boy. "If you were to lose your freckles, if you lost only one, the tiniest of them all, I shouldn't love you any more."

      "And if you lose that dear girl's face I won't love you," promised Boodles. "If you had a horrid moustache to tickle me and make me sneeze, I wouldn't give you the smallest, teeniest, wee bit of a kiss. Well, you can't anyhow, because you've got to be an admiral. How nice it will be when you are grown up and have a lot of ships of your own."

      "We shall be married long before then. Boodles, darling," cried the eager boy. "Directly I am twenty-one we will be married. Only five more years."

      "Such a lot happens in a year," sighed Boodles. "You may meet five more girls far more sunshiny than me, with redder hair and more freckles, since you are so fond of them – "

      "I shan't. You are the only girl who ever was or shall be."

      That is how boys talk when they are sixteen, and when they are twenty-six, and sometimes when they are very old boys of sixty; and girls generally believe them.

      "I wonder if it is right of you to love me," said Boodles doubtfully.

      The answer was what might have been looked for, and ended with the usual question: "Why not?"

      "Because I'm only a baby."

      "You are fourteen, darling. You will be nineteen by the time we are married."

      Although they were only at the beginning of the story they were already slapping over the pages, anxious to reach the "lived happily ever after" conclusion. Young people are always wanting to hurry on; middle-aged to marktime; old to look back. The freshness of life is contained in the first chapter. Youth is a time of unnatural strength, of insanity, a dancing-round-the-may-pole sort of time. Common-sense begins to come when one has grandchildren. Boodles and Aubrey wandered a thousand times in love's fairyland on the romantic banks of the rattling Tavy, and knew as much during their last walk as upon the first; knew they were in love cleanly and honestly; knew that the joy of life was no myth; but knowing nothing, either of them, concerning Giant Despair, who has his mantle trimmed with lovers' hearts, or the history of the fair maid of Astolat, or the existence of Castle Dolorous. Love is largely a pleasure of the imagination, thus a fairy-tale, and sound practical knowledge sweeps the romance of it all away.

      The whole of that folly – if the only real ecstatic bliss of life which is called first love be folly – seemed gone for ever. Aubrey was packed off to do his part in upholding the honour of Boodlesland, as his country named itself in his thoughts; and the years that intervened discovered him probably kissing girls of all complexions, girls with every shade of hair conceivable, girls with freckles and without; and being kissed by them. Boys must have their natural food, and if the best quality be not obtainable they must take what offers. In the interval Boodles remained entirely unkissed, and received no letters. She wasn't surprised. His love had been too fierce. It had blazed up, burnt her, and gone out. Aubrey had forgotten her; forgotten those wonderful walks in Tavyland; forgotten her radiant head and golden freckles. It was all over, that romance of two babies. It was Boodles who did not forget; Boodles who had the wet pillow sometimes; Boodles who was constant like the gorse, which is in flower all the year round.

      No one would call the ordinary Dartmoor postman an angel – his appearance is too much against him – but he does an angel's work. Perhaps there is nothing which quickens the heart of any lonely dweller on the moor so perceptibly as the heavy tread of that red-faced and beer-tainted companion of the goddess of dawn. He leaves curses as well as blessings. He pushes love-letters and bills into the box together. Sometimes he is an hour late, and the miserable watcher frets about the house. Sometimes the wind holds him back. He can be seen struggling against it, and the watcher longs to yoke him to wild horses. There are six precious post-times each week, and the lonely inhabitant of the wilds would not yield one of them to save his soul alive.

      There was an angel's visit to Lewside Cottage, and a letter for Boodles fell from heaven. The child pounced upon it, rushed up to her room like a dog with a piece of meat, locked the door lest any one should enter with the idea of stealing her prize, gloated upon it, almost rolled upon it. She did not open it for some time. She turned it over, smelt it, pinched it, loved it. Tavistock was blurred across the stamp. There was no doubt about that letter. It was a tangible thing. It did not fade away like morning dew. She opened it at last, but did not dare to read it through. She took bites at it, tasting it here and there; and had every sentence by heart before she settled down to read it properly. So she was still dearest Boodles, and he was the same devoted Aubrey. The child jumped upon her bed, and bit the pillow in sheer animal joy.

      He had just come home, and was writing to her at once. She wouldn't recognise him because he had become a tough brown sailor, and the girl's face was his no longer. He was coming to see her at once; and they would walk again by the Tavy and be just the same as ever; and swear the same vows; and kiss the same kisses; and be each other's sun and moon, and all the rest of the idyllic patter, which was as sweet and fresh as ever to poor Boodles. For he had been all the world over and discovered there was only one girl in it; and that was the girl with the radiant head, and the golden skin, and the gold-dust upon her nose. He was as true as he always had been, and as he always would be for ever and evermore.

      Boodles saw nothing mad or presumptuous in that closing sentence. It was just what she would have said. There is no hereafter for young people in their teens; there is an ever and evermore for them. They are like a kitten playing with its own tail, without ever realising that it is its tail.

      Boodles became at once very light and airy. She seemed to have escaped from the body somehow. She felt as if she had been transformed into a bit of sunshine. She floated down-stairs, lighted up the living-room, wrapped herself round Abel Cain, floated into the kitchen to finish preparations for breakfast, discovered the material nature of her hands by breaking a milk-jug, and then humanity asserted itself and she began to shriek.

      "Boodle-oodle!" cried old Weevil; "you have been sleeping in the moonshine."

      "I've broken the milk-jug," screamed Boodles.

      Weevil came shuffling along the passage. Small things were greatly accounted of in Lewside Cottage. There were most of the ingredients of tragedy in a broken milk-jug.

      "How did you do it?" he wailed.

      "It was all because the butter is so round," laughed Boodles.

      Weevil was frightened. He thought the child's mind had broken too; and that was even more serious than the milk-jug. He stood and stared, and made disjointed remarks about bright Dartmoor moons, and girls who would sleep with their blinds up, and insanity which was sure to follow such rashness. But Boodles only laughed the more.

      "I'll tell you," she said. "The butter is very round, and I had it on a plate. I must have tilted the plate, and it was roll, butter, roll. First on the table, where it knocked the milk-jug off its legs. Then it rolled on the floor, and out of the door. It's still rolling. I expect it is nearly at Mary Tavy station by now, and it ought to reach Tavistock about ten o'clock at the