And with this joyous life there came a light into his eyes, a tone in his voice, a spring and buoyancy in his step that brought him back to the days when he ran across Kennedy Square and had no care for the day nor thought for the morrow. Before the week was out he had covered half a dozen canvases with pictures of the house as he saw it that first morning, bathed in the sunshine; of the brook; the sweep of the Notch, and two or three individual trees that he had fallen in love with--a ragged birch in particular --a tramp of a birch with its toes out of its shoes and its bark coat in tatters.
Before the second week had arrived he had sought the main stage-road and had begun work on a big hemlock that stood sentinel over a turn in the highway.
There was a school-house in the distance and a log-bridge under which the brook plunged. Here he settled himself for serious work.
He was so engrossed that he had not noticed the school-children who had come up noiselessly from behind and were looking in wonder at his drawings.
Presently a child, who in her eagerness had touched his shoulder, broke the stillness in apology.
"Say, Mister, there's a lady comes to school every day. She's a painter too, and drawed Sissy Mathers."
Oliver glanced at the speaker and the group about her; wished them all good-morning and squeezed a fresh tube on his palette. He was too much absorbed in his work for prolonged talk. The child, emboldened by his cheery greeting, began again, the others crowding closer. "She drawed the bridge too, and me and Jennie Waters was sitting on the rail--she's awful nice."
Oliver looked up, smiling.
"What's her name?"
"I don't know. Teacher calls her Miss Margaret, but there's more to it. She comes every year."
Oliver bent over his easel, drew out a line brush from the sheaf in his hand, caught up a bit of yellow ochre from his palette and touched up the shadow of the birch. "All the women painters must be Margarets," he said to himself. Then he fell to wondering what had become of her since the school closed.
He had always felt uncomfortable over the night when he had defended "the red-headed girl in blue gingham," as she was called by the students.
She had placed him in the wrong by misunderstanding his reasons for serving her. The students had always looked upon him after that as a quarrelsome person, when he was only trying to protect a woman from insult. He could not find it in his heart to blame her, but he wished that it had not happened.
As these thoughts filled his mind he became so absorbed that the children's good-by failed to reach his ear.
That day Hank had brought him his luncheon--two ears of hot corn in a tin bucket, four doughnuts and an apple--the corn in the bottom of the bucket and the doughnuts and apple on top. He could have walked home for his midday meal, for he was within sound of Samanthy's dinner-horn, but he liked it better this way.
Leaving his easel standing in the road, he had waved his hand in good-by to Hank, picked up the bucket and had crept under the shadow of the bridge to eat his luncheon. He had finished the corn, thrown the cobs to the fish, and was beginning on the doughnuts, when a step on the planking above him caused him to look up. A girl in a tam-o'-shanter cap was leaning over the rail. The sun was behind her, throwing her face into shadow--so blinding a light that Oliver only caught the nimbus of fluffy hair that framed the dark spot of her head. Then came a voice that sent a thrill of surprise through him.
"Why, Mr. Horn! Who would have thought of meeting you here?"
Oliver was on his feet in an instant--a half-eaten doughnut in one hand, his slouch hat in the other.
With this he was shading his eyes against the glare of the sun. He was still ignorant of who had spoken to him.
"I beg your pardon, I--WHY, Miss Grant!" The words burst from his lips as if they had been fired from a gun. "You here!"
"Yes, I live only twenty miles away, and I come here every year. Where are you staying?"
"At Pollard's."
"Why, that's the next clearing from mine. I'm at old Mrs. Taft's. Oh, please don't leave your luncheon."
Oliver had bounded up the bank to a place beside her.
"How good it is to find you here. I am so glad."
He WAS glad; he meant every word of it. "Mrs.
Mulligan said you lived up in the woods, but I had no idea it was in these mountains. Have you had your luncheon?"
"No, not yet," and Margaret held up a basket.
"Look!" and she raised the lid. "Elderberry pie, two pieces of cake--"
"Good! and I have three doughnuts and an apple.
I swallowed every grain of my hot corn like a greedy Jack Horner, or you should have half of it. Come down under the bridge, it's so cool there," and he caught her hand to help her down the bank.
She followed him willingly. She had seen him greet Fred, and Jack Bedford, and even the gentle Professor with just such outbursts of affection, and she knew there was nothing especially personal to her in it all. It was only his way of saying he was glad to see her.
Oliver laid the basket and tin can on a flat stone that the spring freshets had scoured clean; spread his brown corduroy jacket on the pebbly beach beside it, and with a laugh and the mock gesture of a courtier, conducted her to the head of his improvised table.
Margaret laughed and returned the bow, stepping backward with the sweep of a great lady, and settled herself beside him. In a moment she was on her knees bending over the brook, her hands in the water, the tam-o'-shanter beside her. She must wash her hands, she said--"there was a whole lot of chrome yellow on her fingers"--and she held them up with a laugh for Oliver's inspection. Oliver watched her while she dried and bathed her shapely hands, smoothed the hair from her temples and tightened the coil at the back of her head which held all this flood of gold in check, then he threw himself down beside her, waiting until she should serve the feast.
