Kilmeny of the Orchard

d he felt that the blood rushed madly to his face. She was there, bending over the bed of Jun

d he expected to see her shrink and flee, but she did not do so; she

o close to her that he could hear the nervous flutter of her

friend, and I do not wish to d

e that hung at her belt, wrote something on it rapidly, and he

very wicked and dangerous, but I do not think you can be. I have thoug

nd simplicity. Looking earnestly i

is Eric Marshall and I am teaching in the Lindsay school. You, I think, are Kilmeny Gordon. I thought your music so

the calm of her face like a gleam of sunlight rippling over a placid sea. Then she wrote, "I am very sorry that I cannot play this evening. I d

hild, utterly unskilled in the art of hiding her feelings! But why should she hide them?

vening if it is fine. But if it is at all damp or unpleasant you must not come

d her lithe, graceful motions with delight; every movement seemed poetry itself. She looked like a very incarnation of Spring-as if all the

ds full of the lilies, a couplet from

om verme

reaks a faded

rood, is the on

fter all, nothing but a child-and a child set apart from her fellow

he spring brings us. Do you know that their real name is

dered what it was like. I never thought of it being the same as my dear June lilie

ere, where you were sitting that night I frightened you so badly. I could not imagine who or what you were. Sometimes I though

but the most perfect, childlike trust and confidence. If there had been any evil in his heart-any skulking thought, he wa

are different from them-oh, very, very different. I was afraid to come back here the next evening. And yet, somehow, I wanted to come. I did not want y

sorry for

ld you like me better if I co

e in that way, Kilmeny. By the way,

t else should you call me? That is

you that perhaps you would wi

dy ever calls me that. It would make me feel as if I were not myself but somebody else. And y

me the privilege. You have a very lovel

er a girl in a poem? Aunt Janet has never liked my name, although she liked my grandmother. But I

through your

wrote. "Yes, I cannot speak or sing as other peop

w she did not understand him. "I mean, did any one e

e to hold the violin and the bow, and the rest all came of itself. My violin once belonged to Neil, b

s and gestures as artless and unstudied as they were effective. And how strangely little her dumbness seemed to matter after

ere purple against the melting saffron of the sky in the west and the crystalline blue of the sky in the south. Eastward, just over the fir woo

e orchard and under the spruces the light had almost gone, giving place to a green, dewy dusk, made passionately swe

ive questions which showed that she had already formed decided opinions and views about it. Yet it was plain to be seen that she did not regard it as anything she might ev

travel. She did not know what a novel meant and had never heard of one. Curiously enough, she was wel

rough many times and some of the histories. After mother died Aunt Janet gave me all her books. She had a great many. Most of them had been given t

nod

d me all about it. She wa

e trouble; but before she died she told me she believed that she had been unjust to him and that he had not known. She said that when people were dying they saw things more clearly and she saw she had made a mistake about father. She said she had many more

ooks to read, if you wou

s gleamed with int

n that I know them nearly all by heart. One cannot get tired of really b

ever lonel

ced the words. "I can cook and sew. Aunt Janet says I am a very good housekeeper, and she does not praise people very often or very much. And then, when I am not helping her, I have my dear, dea

nd see its wonders and meet those peop

natched her pencil and wrote, with such swiftness of motion and energy of expres

y from home. I do not want ever to see strang

rks. Or perhaps it was the shadow on her birth. Yet she was so innocent that it seemed unlikely she could realize or understand the existence of such a shadow. Eric finally decided that it

reluctantly. She answered by a quick little shake of her sleek, dark head, a

beauty and the

e corner of the firs she paused and w

g a lunch of bread and milk in the kitchen. He looked

a walk, Maste

" sai

son, who was cutting bread at the end of the table, laid down her knife and loaf, and looked at the young man with a softly troubl

I s'pose?" said old Robert dryly