Duchess - Airy Fairy Lilian

When breakfast is over, and they have all turned their backs with gross ingratitude upon the morning-room, she dons her hat and sallies forth bent on discovery.

Through the gardens she goes, admiring the flowers, pulling a blossom or two, making love to the robins and sparrows, and gay little chaffinches, that sit aloft in the branches and pour down sonnets on her head. The riotous butterflies, skimming hither and thither in the bright sunshine, hail her coming, and rush with wanton joy across her eyes, as though seeking to steal from them a lovelier blue for their soft wings. The flowers, the birds, the bees, the amorous wind, all woo this creature, so full of joy and sweetness and the unsurpassable beauty of youth.

She makes a rapid rush through all the hothouses, feeling almost stifled in them this day, so rich in sun, and, gaining the orchard, eats a little fruit, and makes a lasting conquest of Michael, the head-gardener, who, when she has gone into generous raptures over his arrangements, becomes her abject slave on the spot, and from that day forward acknowledges no power superior to hers.

Tiring of admiration, she leaves the garrulous old man, and wanders away over the closely-shaven lawn, past the hollies, into the wood beyond, singing as she goes, as is her wont.

In the deep green wood a delicious sense of freedom possesses her; she walks on, happy, unsuspicious of evil to come, free of care (oh, that we all were so!), with nothing to chain her thoughts to earth, or compel her to dream of aught but the sufficing joy of living, the glad earth beneath her, the brilliant foliage around, the blue heavens above her head.

Alas! alas! how short is the time that lies between the child and the woman! the intermediate state when, with awakened eyes and arms outstretched, we inhale the anticipation of life, is as but one day in comparison with all the years of misery and uncertain pleasure to be eventually derived from the reality thereof!

Coming to a rather high wall, Lilian pauses, but not for long. There are few walls either in Chetwoode or elsewhere likely to daunt Miss Chesney, when in the humor for exploring.

Putting one foot into a friendly crevice, and holding on valiantly to the upper stones, she climbs, and, gaining the top, gazes curiously around.

As she turns to survey the land over which she has traveled, a young man emerges from among the low-lying brushwood, and comes quickly forward. He is clad in a light-gray suit of tweed, and has in his mouth a meerschaum pipe of the very latest design.

He is very tall, very handsome, thoughtful in expression. His hair is light brown, – what there is of it, – his barber having left him little to boast of except on the upper lip, where a heavy, drooping moustache of the same color grows unrebuked. He is a little grave, a little indolent, a good deal passionate. The severe lines around his well-cut mouth are softened and counterbalanced by the extreme friendliness of his kind, dark eyes, that are so dark as to make one doubt whether their blue is not indeed black.

Lilian, standing on her airy perch, is still singing, and imparting to the surrounding scenery the sad story of "Barb'ra Allen's" vile treatment of her adoring swain, and consequent punishment, when the crackling of leaves beneath a human foot causing her to turn, she finds herself face to face with a stranger not a hundred yards away.

The song dies upon her lips, an intense desire to be elsewhere gains upon her. The young man in gray, putting his meerschaum in his pocket as a concession to this unexpected warbler, advances leisurely; and Lilian, feeling vaguely conscious that the top of a wall, though exalted, is not the most dignified situation in the world, trusting to her activity, springs to the ground, and regains with mother earth her self-respect.

"How could you be so foolish? I do hope you are not hurt," says the gray young man, coming forward anxiously.

"Not in the least, thank you," smiling so adorably that he forgets to speak for a moment or two. Then he says with some hesitation, as though in doubt:

"Am I addressing my – ward?"

"How can I be sure," replies she, also in doubt, "until I know whether indeed you are my – guardian?"

"I am Guy Chetwoode," says he, laughing, and raising his hat.

"And I am Lilian Chesney," replies she, smiling in return, and making a pretty old-fashioned reverence.

"Then now I suppose we may shake hands without any breach of etiquette, and swear eternal friendship," extending his hand.

"I shall reserve my oath until later on," says Miss Chesney, demurely, but she gives him her hand nevertheless, with unmistakable bonhommie . "You are going home?" glancing up at him from under her broad-brimmed hat. "If so, I shall go with you, as I am a little tired."

"But this wall," says Guy, looking with considerable doubt upon the uncompromising barrier on the summit of which he had first seen her. "Had we not better go round?"

"A thousand times no. What!" – gayly – "to be defeated by such a simple obstacle as that? I have surmounted greater difficulties than that wall many a time. If you will get up and give me your hands, I dare say I shall be able to manage it."

Thus adjured, Guy climbs, and, gaining the top, stoops to give her the help desired; she lays her hand in his, and soon he draws her in triumph to his side.

"Now to get down," he says, laughing. "Wait." He jumps lightly into the next field, and, turning, holds out his arms to her. "You must not risk your neck the second time," he says. "When I saw you give that tremendous leap a minute ago, my blood froze in my veins. Such terrible exertion was never meant for – a fairy!"

"Am I so very small?" says Lilian. "Well, take me down, then."

She leans toward him, and gently, reverentially he takes her in his arms and places her on the ground beside him. With such a slight burden to lift he feels himself almost a Hercules. The whole act does not occupy half a minute, and already he wishes vaguely it did not take so very short a time to bring a pretty woman from a wall to the earth beneath. In some vague manner he understands that for him the situation had its charm.

Miss Chesney is thoroughly unembarrassed.

"There is something in having a young guardian, after all," she says, casting upon him a glance half shy half merry, wholly sweet. She lays a faint emphasis upon the "young."

"You have had doubts on the subject, then?"

"Serious doubts. But I see there is truth in the old saying that 'there are few things so bad but that they might have been worse.'"

"Do you mean to tell me that I am 'something bad'?"

"No" – laughing; "how I wish I could! It is your superiority frightens me. I hear I must look on you as something superlatively good."

"How shocking! And in what way am I supposed to excel my brethren?"

"In every way," with a good deal of malice: "I have been bred in the belief that you are a rara avis , a model, a – "

"Your teachers have done me a great injury. I shudder when I contemplate the bitter awakening you must have when you come to know me better."

"I hope so. I dare say" – naively – "I could learn to like you very well, if you proved on acquaintance a little less immaculate than I have been led to believe you."

"I shall instantly throw over my pronounced taste for the Christian virtues, and take steadily to vice," says Guy, with decision: "will that satisfy your ladyship?"

"Perhaps you put it a little too strongly," says Lilian, demurely. "By the bye" – irrelevantly, – "what business took you from home yesterday?"

"I have to beg your pardon for that, – my absence, I mean; but I could not help it. And it was scarcely business kept me absent," confesses Chetwoode, who, if he is anything, is strictly honest, "rather a promise to dine and sleep at some friends of ours, the Bellairs, who live a few miles from us."