Part 24 (2/2)
”Have you come to carriages?” she asked, laughingly. ”You used to say if you couldn't ride horseback, or walk, you would stand still.”
”And you agreed with me that carriages were only for the slow, the stupid, and the infirm,” he recalled. ”It's a glorious night. Would you rather walk, really?”
”Really.”
At the entrance to the grounds they parted from the others and went up one of the many avenues radiating from the square.
The air was full of snowflakes, moving so softly and so slowly they scarcely seemed to fall. The electric lights of the city shone cheerfully through the white mist, and the sound of distant mirthmakers fell pleasantly on the ear.
”Snow is the only picture part of winter,” said Carey. ”Do you remember the story of the Snow Princess?”
”You must have a wonderful memory!” he exclaimed. ”You were only six years old when I told you that story.”
”I have a very vivid memory,” she replied. ”Sometimes it almost frightens me.”
”Do you know,” he said, ”that I think people that have dreams and fancies do look backward farther than matter-of-fact people, who let things out of sight go out of mind?”
”You were full of dreams then, but I don't believe you are now. Of course, politicians have no time or inclination for dreams.”
”No; they usually have a dread of dreams. Would you rather have found me still a dreamer?” he asked, looking down into her dark eyes, which drooped beneath the intensity of his gaze.
Then her delicate face, misty with sweetness, turned toward him again.
”No; dreams are for children and for old people, whose memories, like their eyes, are for things far off. This is your time to do things, not to dream them. And you have done things. I heard Major Braden telling father about you at dinner--your success in law, your getting some bill killed in the legislature, and your having been to South America. Father says you have had a wonderful career for a young man.
I used to think when I was a little girl that when you were a grown-up prince you would kill dragons and bring home golden fleeces.”
He smiled with a sudden deep throb of pleasure. Her voice stirred him with a sense of magic.
”This is the Braden home,” she said, stopping before a big house that seemed to be all pillars and porches. ”You'll come in for a little while, won't you?”
”I'll come in, if I may, and help you to recall some more of Maplewood days.”
A trim little maid opened the door and led the way into a long library where in the fireplace a pine backlog, crisscrossed by st.u.r.dy forelogs of birch and maple, awaited the touch of a match. It was given, and the room was filled with a flaring light that made the soft lamplight seem pale and feeble.
”This is a genuine Brumble fire,” he exclaimed, as they sat down before the ruddy glow. ”It carries me back to farm life.”
”How many phases of life you have seen,” mused Carey. ”Country, college, city, tropical, and now this political life. Which one have you really enjoyed the most?”
”My life in the Land of Dreams--that beautiful Isle of Everywhere,” he replied.
Her eyes grew radiant with understanding.
”You are not so very much changed since your days of dreaming,” she said, smiling. ”To be sure, you have lost your freckles and you don't kick at the ground when you walk, and--”
”And,” he reminded, as she paused.
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