"Well, what?"
"There is no "what" in sight at present, Mr. Rollo."
"I shall have to give you lessons severely! Look at that acorn.?
Don"t you like acorns?"
"Very much. But best, I think, in the spring, when they are struggling into life,?shooting up and shooting down,?shewing their possibilities. They are lovely then, with their little crumpled pink leaves."
"That"s the next stage. I want to make my life like that acorn as it is now, full rounded to its utmost fruitage. So many lives are like these empty cups,?with the fruit lost."
Hazel balanced one of the cups on the tip of her finger, thoughtfully. "I suppose they are," she said. "Good for nothing but to look at."
"Do you think such lives good to look at?"
"Sometimes pretty to look at. Just as this cup is, till you remember that it is empty."
"Hazel, did you study the lesson I gave you last winter?"
"I have studied it. Yes."
"And the result? ?"
Looking down at the olive moss tufts at her feet, she answered, slowly,
"I am not?quite?sure."
"You can talk just as well if you are resting," said Rollo; and he pulled her down to her place again, and threw himself on the bank beside her. "Now go on," he said, "and tell me all about it."
But "all about it" was a great deal. As the fireside musings, the long night watches, the fears and questionings and perplexities came up one by one and flung their shadows over her face, Hazel answered,
"No, I cannot do that."
"I am the very person to help your perplexities."
"But that is a.s.suming you know what they are!"
"Never mind. You will find it is rue. What makes the confusion, Wych?"
The voice was a temptation; manly and clear, and thrilled through with a hidden tenderness in the last words. Rollo was not studying her face, but piling up his acorns on the ground between them.
"Everything helped make it."
"Yes. Well?"
"It was not "well" at all," said Hazel. "I do not like tangles. And this was unmitigated. I could not pull out one single smooth thread, and present it for your inspection, Mr. Rollo."
"Unpractical," said Rollo. "Make some statement of what you do know."
"Statements are not precisely in my line," said Hazel. "And I am not the least in the habit of telling all I know."
"Hitherto."
Hazel did not immediately answer. She sat watching the heap of acorns and the hand that was arranging them, a quiet smile upon her lips. What had she said to Josephine about "diamonds from a hand that you do not love"??whereas even acorns, from a hand that?
With a sudden scarlet flush she turned away, and bending down on the other side, began to gather mosses on her own account.
"Come, Hazel," said her companion?"the tangle has got to be encountered, and I think we shall go into it most safely together."
"I could not tell you," she said, "and you could not tell me. n.o.body but oneself can disentangle "why" and "whether" and "what"."
Rollo cast a quick glance up at her, which probably brought him all the intelligence he wanted; for he only remarked audaciously that she "would know better some day."
"I could not make you understand, Mr. Rollo. And unless you understood, you would just think there could not be room in my head for a single spark of sense."
"You don"t know what I think of your head. Well?if you see a little shoot of confidence in me starting up in your mind, encourage it, Hazel!"
"I shall never see it, Mr. Rollo."
"Nor encourage it, of course. Well?I am in a bad way."
"Things pa.s.s the acorn stage, you know," she said, laughing a little.
"Yes. Do you remember my having once had the honour to remark to you, that I objected to be treated as an old guardian?"
"No," said Hazel,?"you asked me if I expected to do it. But perhaps that meant the same thing in those days."
"Perhaps it did. What do you think of it in these days?"
Hazel made a sudden transition.
"Will you like to come and go chestnutting in these woods, Mr.
Rollo? The Powders all say that I promised them such a day, though I am sure I do not remember it."
"I don"t remember it," said Rollo lazily.
"As you were not here when I am said to have made the promise, I do not see how you should. But it is needful I should ask you, or Mr. Falkirk will ask?as he did once before upon you non- appearance?if you have offended me."
"Is the day fixed?"
"No. But they say I have promised."
"Then there"s no help for it, I know. Hazel?when you and I had a ride home in the dark one night, a year ago, did I misunderstand you then?"
Silence, instant and deep. Hazel took some time to frame her answer.
"What did you understand?"
The supreme flash of Rollo"s eyes was instantly hidden by the lowered eyelids; and there was no laughter even in his voice as he answered,