Chapter 6 - Page 2

of hedge twigs, a something like a
very light foot-tapping.

Curiosity boarded Lewisham and carried him after the briefest
struggle. He looked round, and there she was, her back to him,
reaching after the spiky blossoming blackthorn that crested the
opposite hedge. Remarkable accident! She had not seen him!

In a moment Lewisham's legs were flying over the stile. He went down
the steps in the bank with such impetus that it carried him up into
the prickly bushes beside her. "Allow me," he said, too excited to see
she was not astonished.

"Mr. Lewisham!" she said in feigned surprise, and stood away to give
him room at the blackthorn.

"Which spike will you have?" he cried, overjoyed. "The whitest? The
highest? Any!"

"That piece," she chose haphazard, "with the black spike sticking out
from it."

A mass of snowy blossom it was against the April sky, and Lewisham,
straggling for it--it was by no means the most accessible--saw with
fantastic satisfaction a lengthy scratch flash white on his hand, and
turn to red.

"Higher up the lane," he said, descending triumphant and breathless,
"there is blackthorn.... This cannot compare for a moment...."

She laughed and looked at him as he stood there flushed, his eyes
triumphant, with an unpremeditated approval. In church, in the
gallery, with his face foreshortened, he had been effective in a way,
but this was different. "Show me," she said, though she knew this was
the only place for blackthorn for a mile in either direction.

"I _knew_ I should see you," he said, by way of answer, "I felt sure I
should see you to-day."

"It was our last chance almost," she answered with as frank a quality
of avowal. "I'm going home to London on Monday."

"I knew," he cried in triumph. "To Clapham?" he asked.

"Yes. I have got a situation. You did not know that I was a shorthand
clerk and typewriter, did you? I am. I have just left the school, the
Grogram School. And now there is an old gentleman who wants an
amanuensis."

"So you know shorthand?" said he. "That accounts for the stylographic
pen. Those lines were written.... I have them still."

She smiled and raised her eyebrows. "Here," said Mr. Lewisham, tapping
his breast-pocket.

"This lane," he said--their talk was curiously inconsecutive--"some
way along this lane, over the hill and down, there is a gate, and that
goes--I mean, it opens into the path that runs along the river
bank. Have you been?"

"No," she said.