Part 8 (1/2)

”At the Falls, and I know when you moved there--five years ago, or six.”

”Six. How do you know?”

”Oh, I know.”

As you grew older, and learned to call more boys and girls in the school by name, and more of the clerks in the shops, you discovered new people in the town where you thought you knew everybody, and it made the town infinitely large. But this boy had not been so near her, or she would have seen him. He could not have been in school with her. He must have worked on a farm and studied by himself with the grammar-school teacher at the Falls, and taken special examinations to enter the Junior cla.s.s this year, as Willard said that some boy at the Falls was doing. He must be that boy or Judith would surely have seen him.

She nodded her head wisely. ”I know.”

”You know a lot.” In his soft brogue this sounded like the most complimentary thing that could be said.

”But you don't remember me.” This had troubled her at first. Now it seemed like the most delicious of jokes, and they laughed at it together.

”That was the first thing you said to me.”

”Isn't it queer”--Judith's eyes widened and darkened as if it were something more than queer, something far worse--”so queer! I can't think what the first thing was that you said to me.”

They confronted this problem in silence, staring at each other with wide-open eyes. Though they were circling smoothly at last, carried on by the slow, sweet music, so that they hardly seemed to be moving at all, and though he did not really move his head, the boy's eyes seemed to Judith to be coming nearer to hers, nearer all the time. They were beautiful eyes, deep brown, and very clear. His brown hair grew in a squarish line across his forehead, and waved softly at the temples. It looked as if he had brushed it hard there to brush the curl out, but it was curliest there.

”You've got the brownest eyes,” said Judith.

”You've got the biggest eyes. Won't you tell me your name?”

Judith did not answer. She looked away from the disconcerting brown eyes and down at her hand, against his shoulder, her own little hand, with the careful manicure and the dull polish that was all her mother permitted; bare of rings, though Norah had given her a beautiful garnet ring for Christmas. How s.h.i.+ny his coat-sleeve was, and her hand looked unfamiliar to her--not like her own at all. She pressed tighter against his shoulder to steady herself.

The music was growing quicker and louder, working up gradually but surely into a breathless crescendo that meant the end of the dance. It whirled them dizzily about. The sleepy spell of the dance broke in this final crash of noise, and as it broke a sudden panic caught Judith.

What had she been saying to this boy? She had never talked like this to a boy before. And why was she dancing with him? She ought to be dancing with Willard--Willard, waiting there in the dressing-room door with her dance order in his hand, with the patient and puzzled look in his eyes, with brick-red colour in his cheeks from the affront she had subjected him to. What would Willard think of her? What would her mother think?

And who was this boy? Just what the children had called him in taunting screams, on that long-ago May night, and she would have liked to scream it now--a paddy.

Instead, she lifted her head, no longer afraid of the boy's brown eyes, and said it, as cruelly as she could, in her soft and clear little voice:

”Paddy,” she said; ”a paddy from Paddy Lane.”

She looked defiantly into his eyes, but they did not grow angry. They only grew very soft and kind, and they laughed at her. She wanted to look away from the laughter in them, but she could not look away from the kindness. Now she was not angry with him any more, but glad she was dancing with him. She knew she never wanted to stop dancing.

”Paddy?” He thought she had said it to remind him of that May night; he was remembering it now. ”Are you that little girl?”

”Yes.”

”The little girl who broke the lantern?”

”Yes,” said Judith proudly.

”And had such long black legs, and went scuttling across the lawn, and screaming out to me--that funny little girl?”

”But I did break the lantern,” said Judith.

All the bravest stories that she had made up in the dark to put herself to sleep with at night, all the perilous adventures of land and sea, camp fire or pirate s.h.i.+p, began with the breaking of that lantern, and the boy she rescued had been her companion upon them, her brushwood boy, her own boy. She had found him at last, and he was laughing--laughing at her.