rom me,
she stood!--she, my Flora, my goddess, bareheaded, swept by chequers of
morning sunshine and green shadows, with the dew on her sandal shoes and
the lap of her morning gown appropriately heaped with flowers--with
tulips, scarlet, yellow, and striped. And confronting her, with his back
towards me and a remembered patch between the armholes of his
stable-waistcoat, Robie the gardener rested both hands on his spade and
expostulated.

"But I like to pick my tulips, leaves and all, Robie!"

"Aweel, miss; it's clean ruinin' the bulbs, that's all I say to you."

And that was all I waited to hear. As he bent over and resumed his
digging I shook a branch of the beech with both hands and set it
swaying. She heard the rustle and glanced up, and, spying me, uttered a
gasping little cry.

"What ails ye, miss?" Robie straightened himself instanter; but she had
whipped right-about face and was gazing towards the kitchen garden--

"Isn't that a child among the arti--the strawberry beds, I mean?"

He cast down his spade and ran. She turned, let the tulips fall at her
feet, and, ah! her second cry of gladness, and her heavenly blush as she
stretched out both arms to me! It was all happening over again--with the
difference that now my arms too were stretched out.

"Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know...."

Robie had run a dozen yards perhaps, when either the noise I made in
scrambling off the wall, or some recollection of having been served in
this way before, brought him to a halt. At any rate, he turned round,
and just in time to witness our embrace.

"The good Lord behear!" he exclaimed, stood stock-still for a moment,
and waddled off at top speed towards the back door.

"We must tell Aunt at once! She will--why, Anne, where are you going?"
She caught my sleeve.

"To the hen-house, to be sure," said I.

A moment later, with peals of happy laughter, we had taken hands and
were running along the garden alleys towards the house. And I remember,
as we ran, finding it somewhat singular that this should be the first
time I had ever invaded Swanston Cottage by way of the front door.

We came upon Miss Gilchrist in the breakfast room. A pile of linen lay
on the horse-hair sofa; and the good lady, with a measuring tape in one
hand and a pair of scissors in the other, was walking around Ronald, who
stood on the hearthrug in a very manly attitude. She regarded me over
her gold-rimmed spectac