"Not Abraham Lincoln," Let.i.tia interposed, mildly. "You misunderstood me. I said Lincoln green."
"Same thing," said the clerk, tartly.
Mr. Peabody then emerged smilingly from behind his wall.
"How do you do, Miss Primrose," said he. "What can we do for you this morning?" Let.i.tia carefully repeated her request. He shook his head, while the young clerk smiled triumphantly.
"No," he said. "You must be mistaken. I have never even heard of such a color--and if there was one of that name," he added, with evident pride in his even tones, "I should certainly know of it. We have other greens--"
Let.i.tia flushed.
"Why," she explained, "the English archers were accustomed to wearing a cloth called Lincoln green."
Mr. Peabody smiled deprecatingly.
"I never heard of it," he replied, stiffly; "and, as I say, I have been in the business for thirty years."
"But don"t you remember Robin Hood and his merry men?"
"Oh!" exclaimed the merchant, a great light breaking in upon him. "You mean the fairy stories! Ha, ha! Very good. Very good, indeed. Well, no, Miss Primrose, I"m afraid we can hardly provide you with the cloth that fairies--"
"Show me your green cloths--all of them," said Let.i.tia, her cheeks burning.
"Certainly, Miss Primrose. Miss Baggs, show Miss Primrose all of our green cloths--_all_ of them."
"Light green or dark green?" queried Miss Baggs, who had been delighted with the whole affair.
Let.i.tia pondered. There had been some reason, she reflected, for Robin Hood"s choice of gear.
"Something," she said, at last--"something as near to the shade of foliage as you can give me."
"I beg pardon?" inquired Miss Baggs.
"The color of leaves," explained Let.i.tia.
"Well," Miss Baggs retorted, smartly, "some leaves are light, and some are dark, and some leaves are in-between."
There was a dangerous gleam in Let.i.tia"s eyes. "Show me _all_ your green cloths," she requested, curtly--"all of them." Miss Baggs obeyed.
"I suppose it really isn"t Lincoln green, you know," Let.i.tia said, when she had brought the parcel home with her and had spread its contents upon the sofa, "but I hope you"ll like it, Dove. It is the nearest to tree-green I could find."
It was, indeed.
Now, Dove had never heard of a boy in green, and had grave doubts, which it would not do, however, to even hint to dear Let.i.tia; so made it was, that archer-suit, though by some strange freak of fancy that caused Let.i.tia keen regret, Robin, dressed in it, could seldom be induced to play at archery, always insisting, to her discomfiture, that he was Gra.s.s!
"When you grow up, my bowman," she once told him, "I"ll buy you a white suit, all of flannel, and father shall teach you to play at cricket in the orchard."
"But crickets are black," cried Robin, whose eye for color, or the absence of it, I told Let.i.tia, was bound to ruin her best-laid English plans.
It was good to see them, the Archer Bold and the Gray Lady walking together, hand-in-hand--the one beaming up, the other down; the one so subject to sudden leaps and bounds and one-legged hoppings to avoid the cracks, the other flurried lest those wild friskings should disturb the balance she had kept so perfectly all those years till then.
In their walks and talks lay many stories, I am sure--things which never will be written unless Let.i.tia turns to authorship, for which it is a little late, I fear; but even then she would never dream of putting such simple matters down. She does not know at all the delicious Lady of the Linen Reticule, who, to herself, is commonplace enough. She might, perhaps, make a tale or two of the Archer in Lincoln Green, but what is the romance of an archer without the lady in it?
One drowsy afternoon on a Sunday in summer-time I stretched myself in my easy-chair with another for my slippered feet. My dinner had ended pleasantly with a love-in-a-cottage pudding which had dripped blissfully with a heavenly cataract of golden sauce. Dove had gone out on a Sabbath mission, rustling away in a gown sprinkled with rose-buds--one of those summer things in which it is not quite safe for any woman to risk herself in this wicked world.
Such shallow thoughts were pa.s.sing through my mind as Dove departed, and when the front gate clicked behind her, I opened a charming novel and went to sleep. I know I slept, for I walked in a path I have never seen.
I should like to see it, for it must be beautiful in the spring-time. It was a kind of autumn when I was there. I was dragging my feet about in the yellow leaves, when a senile hollyhock leaned over quietly and tickled me on the ear. As I brushed it away I heard it giggling. Then a twig of pear-tree bent and trifled with my nose, which is a thing no gentleman permits, even in dreams, and I brushed it smartly. Then I heard a voice--I suppose the gardener"s--telling something to behave itself. Then I swished again among the leaves. How long I swished there I have no notion, but I heard more voices by-and-by, and I remember saying to myself, "They are behind the gooseberries." They did not know, of course, that I was there, else they had talked more softly.
"No," said he, "you be the horsey."
"Oh no," said the other, "I"d rather drive."
"No, _you_ be the horsey."
"Sh! Let me drive."
"I said _you_ be the horsey."
"I be the horsey?"
"Yes. Whoa, horsey! D"up! Whoa! D"up!"
Then all was confusion behind the gooseberries and the horsey d"upped and whoaed, and whoaed and d"upped, till I all but d"upped. I _did_ move, and the noise stopped.
How long I slept there I do not know, but I heard again those voices behind the vines, though more subdued now, mere tender undertones like lovers in a garden seat. Lovers I supposed them, and, keeping still, I listened:
"But I"m not your little boy," said one, "because you haven"t any."
"Oh yes, you are," replied the other, confidently. "You"re my little boy because I love you."
"But why don"t you ask G.o.d to send you a little boy all your own, just four years old like me, so we could play together? Why don"t you?"
"Because," the reply was, "you"re all the little boy I need."
"But if you _did_ ask G.o.d and the angel brought you a little boy, then his name would be Billie."
"Oh, would it?"
"Yes, his name would be Billie, because now Billie is the next name to Robin."
"What do you mean by the next name to Robin?"
"Why, "cause now, first comes Robin, and then comes Billie, and then comes Tommy, or else m.u.f.fins, if you turn the corner--unless he"s a girl--and then he"s Annie."
"What?" gasped the second voice. "I don"t understand."
"Well, then," the first voice answered, wearily, "call him Johnny."
I know at the time the explanation seemed quite clear to me, as it must have been to the second speaker, for the colloquy ended then and there.