The Post-Girl. Edward Charles Booth

      Switzerland."

      With this in his hand, and the big bath towel and red bathing drawers slung over his arm from their drying place on the hot sill, he made off down the baked pathway, whistling pleasantly like a new pied piper—a whole throng of feathered followers at his heels. By the wooden gate, where the red-tiled pump-walk makes junction with the front path at the kitchen end, Miss Bates waylaid him, holding out damp semi-wiped fingers, and saying an expectant "Thank ye."

      "What for?" asked the Spawer, trying to dodge on either side of her ample bosom with an active eye for the kitchen door.

      "For t' letter," said Miss Bates, unperturbed, "if ye 've written it. Ah 'll gie it to 'er as she gans back."

      "Back where from?" inquired the Spawer, with a sudden thirst for information.

      "Fro' Far Wrangham," Miss Bates told him, "... wi' letters for Barclay. But she 'll call again on 'er way 'ome, an' ah 'll see she teks it an' all, then."

      "Thanks..." the Spawer decided on consideration, "but I think I 'll see her myself. I want to ask about posts...."

      "There 's nobbut one," Miss Bates interposed hurriedly, "an' it gans out at 'alf-past four."

      "That 's not the one I mean," the Spawer explained, and tacked on very quickly: "Which way does she come back?"

      "It 's none so easy ti say," Miss Bates parried. "She mud come back bi Barclay's road ... or bi—bi"—the task of devising a second route being somewhat beyond her powers at the moment, she fell back upon a generality—"bi some other road," adding for justification: "She 'd come thruff [through] 'edge an' all if it suited 'er."

      "It 's on my way, anyhow," the Spawer determined lightheartedly. "I 'll sit on Barclay's gate and take my chance."

      He had been sitting on Barclay's gate some time, and would have sold all share of interest in the chance for a wax vesta, when suddenly he heard the stir of someone swiftly coming, and turning a leisurely head—with a hand laid ready to drop to his feet when they should reach the gate—became in a moment keenly alert to an object that showed now and again through the green hedge: a moving object that was neither a bird, nor a blossom, nor a butterfly, ... but a blue Tam-o'-Shanter.

      CHAPTER V

      And the face beneath it was the face he had been trying to remodel this morning, out of the obstinate stiff clays of remembrance. There were the dear, kissable, candid freckles, powdered in pure gold-dust about the bridge of the nose and the brows—each one a minstrel to truth; there were the great round eyes, shining smoothly, with the black-brown velvety softness of bulrushes; there were the rapt red lips, no longer baffling his gaze, but steadfast and discernible; there was the big beneficence of hair; the oaten-tinted cheeks, showing their soft surface-glint of golden down where the sunlight caught them; the little pink lobes; the tanned russet neck, so sleek and slim and supple, and the blue Tam-o'-Shanter topping all, as though it were a part of her, and had never moved since last the Spawer had looked upon it.

      In every other respect she was the same girl that had sat in Dixon's place on the sofa last night. She wore still the simple skirt of blue serge, cut short above her ankles for freedom in walking (showing too, at close quarters, a cleverly-suppressed seam running down to the hem on the left side, like a zig-zag of lightning), and the plain print blouse, pale blue, with no pattern on it, ending at the throat in a neat white collar borrowed from the masculine mode, and tied with a little flame of red silk. Only the light rain-proof cape was wanting, but over her shoulders, in place of it, was slung the broad canvas belt of a post-bag that flapped bulkily against her right hip as she strode, with her right hand dipped out of sight into its capacious pocket. She came swinging along the hedge at a fine, healthy pace, as though the sun were but a harmless bright new penny, making rhythmic advance in a pair of stubborn little square-toed shoes, stoutly cobbled, with a pleasing redolence of Puritanism about their austere extremities; and so into the Spawer's presence, all unconscious and unprepared.

      The sight of him, waiting over the gate, with his elbows ruling the top bar, his chin upon linked fingers, and a leisurely foot hoisted on to the second rail, broke the rhythm of her step for an instant on a sudden tide of color, and brought the hand out of the bag to readjust the shoulder-strap in a quick display of purpose. But she showed no frailties of embarrassment. She came along with simple self-possession to the greeting point, giving him her eyes there in a queer little indescribable sidelong look that a mere man might ponder over for a lifetime and never know the meaning of—a queer little indescribable, smileless, sidelong look, sent out under her lashes, that had nothing of fear or favor, or friendship or salutation, or embarrassment about it, but was pure, unmingled, ingenuous, feminine, stock-taking curiosity, as though she were studying him dispassionately from behind a loophole and calculating on his conduct with the most sublime, delicious indifference. The Spawer could have thrown up his head and laughed aloud at the look. Not in any spirit of ridicule—angels and ministers of grace defend us!—but with fine appreciative enjoyment, as one laughs for sheer pleasure at a beautiful piece of musical phrasing or an unexpected point of technique. If he had opened the gate with a grave mouth and let her through, not a doubt but she would have passed on without so much as the presumption of an eyelash upon their last night's relations, and never even looked back over a shoulder. But he stood and barred the way with his unyielding smile, and when she came up to him: "Are n't you going to speak to me?" he asked meekly.

      At that the quick light of recognition and acknowledgment poured through the loophole. Not all the gathered sunbeams, had the girl been of stained glass, could have flooded her to a more surpassing friendly radiance than did her own inward smile. No word accompanied it, as if, indeed, with such a perfect medium for expression, any were needed. She drew up to the gate, and casting herself into a sympathetic reproduction of his attitude at a discreet distance down the rail, shaded a glance of gentle curiosity at him under her velvety thickness of lashes.

      "To think," said the Spawer, looking at her with incredulous enjoyment, "here I 've been waiting innocently for the post, and wondering what it would be like when it came, and making up my mind it never was coming—and it 's you all the time."

      "Did n't you know?"

      "Sorra a word."

      "I wanted to tell you all the time ... last night, who I was."

      "I wanted badly to ask."

      "But I dared n't."

      "And I dared n't either. What a couple of cowards we 've been. Let 's be brave now, shall we, to make up for it? I'll ask and you shall tell me. Who are you?"

      She dipped an almost affectionate hand into the post-bag, and extended it partly by way of presentation.

      "I 'm the post-girl," she said.

      He looked at the bag, and then along the extended arm to her.

      "Really?" he asked, visibly uncertain that the post-bag was not merely part of a pleasing masquerade, or that the girl might not have put herself voluntarily under its brown yoke for some purpose as inexplicable as the trudging to Cliff Wrangham by starlight.

      "Really and truly," she said. "I know I ought to have told you ... at first. But I thought, perhaps..." She plucked at a blade of grass, and biting it with her small, milk-white teeth, studied the bruised green rib with lowered eyes. "... Thought perhaps you 'd taken me for somebody different. And I was frightened you might be offended when you knew who it was."

      In the clear frankness of her confession, and the soft, inquiring fearlessness of eye with which she encountered his glance at its conclusion, there was no tincture of abasement. As she stood there by the gate, with the broad badge of servitude across her girl's breast, she seemed glorified for the moment into a living text, attesting eloquently that it is not toil that dishonors, and that the social differences in labor come but from the laborer. In such wise the Spawer interpreted her, and embraced the occasion for belief with an inward glad response.

      "But why should I be offended at the truth?" said he at length, his eyes waltzing all round hers (that were vainly trying to bring them to a standstill) in lenient laughter. "And how on earth could