Part 19 (1/2)

”If you will have patience and not go near them all day, I will show you in the evening.”

Agnes promised; and Willie gave the whole day to getting things on a bit. Amongst other things he wove such a network along the bough of the Scotch fir, that it was quite safe for Agnes to walk on it down to the great red hole of the tree. There he was content to make a pause for the present, constructing first, however, a little chair of bough and branch and rope and twig in which she could safely sit.

Just as he had finished the chair, he heard her voice calling, in a tone that grew more and more pitiful.

”Willie!--Willie!--Willie!--Willie!”

He got down and ran to find her. She was at the window of his room, where she had gone to wait till he called her, but her patience had at last given way.

”I'm _so_ tired, Willie! Mayn't I come yet?”

”Wait just one moment more,” said Willie, and ran to the house for his mother's shawl.

As soon as he began to wrap it about her, Agnes said, thoughtfully--

”Somebody did that to me before--not long ago--I remember: it was the angel in my dream.”

When Willie put the corner over her face, she said, ”He did that too!”

and when he took her in his arms, she said, ”He did that too! How funny you should do just what the angel did in my dream!”

Willie ran about with her here and there through the ruins, into the house, up and down the stairs, and through the garden in many directions, until he was satisfied he must have thoroughly bewildered her as to whereabouts they were, and then at last sped with her up the stair to the fork of the elm-tree. There he threw back the shawl, and told her to look.

To see her first utterly bewildered expression--then the slow glimmering dawn of intelligence, as she began to understand where she was--next the gradual rise of light in her face as if it came there from some spring down below, until it broke out in a smile all over it, when at length she perceived that this was what he had been working at, and why he wouldn't have her with him--gave Willie all the pleasure he had hoped for--quite satisfied him, and made him count his labour well rewarded.

”O Willie! Willie! it was all for me!--Wasn't it now?”

”Yes, it was, pet,” said Willie.

”It was all to make a bird of me--wasn't it?” she went on.

”Yes--as much of a bird as I could. I couldn't give you wings, you know, and I hadn't any of my own to fly up with you to the moon, as the angel in your dream did. The dream was much nicer--wasn't it?”

”I'm not sure about that--really I'm not. I think it is nicer to have a wind coming you don't know from where, and making all the leaves flutter about, than to have the wings of birdies making the wind. And I don't care about the man in the moon much. He's not so nice as you, Willie.

And yon red ray of the sun through there on the fir-tree is as good nearly as the moon.”

”Oh! but you may have the moon, if you wait a bit. She'll be too late to-night, though.”

”But now I think of it, Willie,” said Agnes, ”I do believe it wasn't a dream at all.”

”Do you think a real angel carried you really up to the moon, then?”

asked Willie.

”No; but a real Willie carried me really up into this tree, and the moon shone through the leaves, and I thought they were birds. You're my angel, Willie, only better to me than twenty hundred angels.”

And Agnes threw her arms round his neck and hugged and kissed him.

As soon as he could speak, that is, as soon as she ceased choking him, he said--