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Read Ebook: Rose MacLeod by Brown Alice
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Ebook has 2470 lines and 66618 words, and 50 pages
stole out of the house and, a black cloak about her, this time, went across the fields to the oak tree. At a little distance from it she paused, her heart too imperious to let her speak and find out whether he was there. But when she was about to venture it, a voice came from under the tree.
"Don't stay there, playmate. Come into the house."
Then she went on.
"Where are you?" she asked. There was an eloquent quiver in her voice.
"Never mind. I'm in the house. Stop where you are. There's a little throne. I made it for you."
She had her hand on the back of a rough chair. At once she seated herself.
"I never heard of a throne in a playhouse," she said, with that new merriment he made for her.
"You never saw a playhouse just like this. That's a beautiful throne. It fits together like a chair. It's here in the playhouse by night, but before daylight I draw it up into the tree and hide it."
"What if somebody finds it?"
"They'll think it's a chair."
"What if they break it?"
"That's easy. We'll make another. There's nothing so easy as to make a throne for a playhouse, if you know the way. Well, playmate, how have you been, all this long time?"
When she came across the field she had meant to tell him how sad she was, how perplexed, how incapable of meeting the ills confronting her. But immediately it became unnecessary, and she only laughed and said,--
"It hasn't been a long time at all."
"Hasn't it? Oh, I thought it had!"
"Have you been here every night?"
"Every night."
"But it rained."
"I know it, outside. It doesn't rain in a playhouse."
"Did you truly come?"
"Of course. What did I tell you? I said 'every night.'"
"Did you have an umbrella?"
"An umbrella in a playhouse? You make me laugh."
"You must have got wet through."
"Not always. Sometimes I climbed up in the branches--in the roof, I mean. You're eclipsed to-night, aren't you?"
"What do you mean?"
"That dark cloak. The other night you were a white goddess sitting there in the moonlight. You were terribly beautiful then. It's almost a shame to be so beautiful. This is better. I rather like the cloak. You're nothing but a voice to-night, coming out of the dark."
Immediately she had a curious jealousy of the white dress that made her beautiful to him when he did not really know her face.
"You have never seen me," she said involuntarily.
"Oh yes, I have. In the shack, that night. Then the day you came. I saw you driving by."
"Where were you?"
"In the yard looking at some grafted trees. Peter was late from the train. I got impatient, so I went round fussing over the trees, to keep myself busy. Then you came up the drive, and I saw you and retreated in good order."
"You needn't have hated me so. You hadn't really seen me."
"I saw enough. I saw your cheek and one ear and the color of your hair. Take care, playmate, you mustn't do that."
"What?"
"You mustn't say I hated you. You know it wasn't hate."
Some daring prompted her to ask, "What was it, then?" but she folded her hands and crossed her feet in great contentment and was still.
"Tell me things," she heard him saying.
"What things? About the house up there? About grannie? About Peter?"
"No, no. I know all about grannie and Peter. Tell me things I never could know unless we were here in the playhouse, in the dark."
Her mind went off, at that, to the wonder of it. She was here in strange circumstances, and of all the occurrences of her life, it seemed the most natural. Immediately she had the warmest curiosity, the desire that he should talk inordinately and tell her all the things he had done to-day, yesterday, all the days.
"You tell," she said. "Begin at the beginning, and tell me about your life."
"Why, playmate!" His voice had even a sorrowful reproach. "There's nothing in it. Nothing at all. I have only dug in the ground and made things grow."
"What people have you known?"
"Grannie."
"She isn't people."
"She's my people. She's all there is, except Peter, and he hasn't been here."
Something like jealousy possessed her. She was stung by her own ignorance.
"But there are lots of years when we didn't meet," she said.
"Lots of them. But I don't care anything about them. I told you so the other night."
"Don't you care about mine?"
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