nadmired days, in which he had wandered about the lanes of
Guestwick as his only amusement, and had composed hundreds of rhymes
in honour of Lily Dale which no human eye but his own had ever seen,
he had come to regard himself as almost a burden upon the earth.
Nobody seemed to want him. His own mother was very anxious; but her
anxiety seemed to him to indicate a continual desire to get rid of
him. For hours upon hours he would fill his mind with castles in the
air, dreaming of wonderful successes in the midst of which Lily Dale
always reigned as a queen. He would carry on the same story in his
imagination from month to month, almost contenting himself with such
ideal happiness. Had it not been for the possession of that power,
what comfort could there have been to him in his life? There are lads
of seventeen who can find happiness in study, who can busy themselves
in books and be at their ease among the creations of other minds.
These are they who afterwards become well-informed men. It was not so
with John Eames. He had never been studious. The perusal of a novel
was to him in those days a slow affair; and of poetry he read but
little, storing up accurately in his memory all that he did read.
But he created for himself his own romance, though to the eye a most
unromantic youth; and he wandered through the Guestwick woods with
many thoughts of which they who knew him best knew nothing. All this
he thought of now as, with devious steps, he made his way towards his
old home,--with very devious steps, for he went backwards through the
woods by a narrow path which led right away from the town down to a
little water-course, over which stood a wooden foot-bridge with a
rail. He stood on the centre of the plank, at a spot which he knew
well, and rubbing his hand upon the rail, cleaned it for the space
of a few inches of the vegetable growth produced by the spray of the
water. There, rudely carved in the wood, was still the word LILY.
When he cut those letters she had been almost a child. "I wonder
whether she will come here with me and let me show it to her," he
said to himself. Then he took out his knife and cleared the cuttings
of the letters, and having done so, leaned upon the rail, and looked
down upon the running water. How well things in the world had gone
for him! How well! And yet what would it all be if Lily would not
come to him? How well the world had gone for him! In those days when
he stood there carving the girl