Audrey

"Evelyn!" he cried. "Poor child--poor friend"-She turned her face upon him. "Don't!" she said, and her lips were

smiling, though her eyes were full of tears. "We have forgot that it is

May Day, and that we must be light of heart. Look how white is that

dogwood-tree! Break me a bough for my chimney-piece at Williamsburgh."

He brought her a branch of the starry blossoms. "Did you notice," she

asked, "that the girl who ran--Audrey--wore dogwood in her hair? You could

see her heart beat with very love of living. She was of the woods, like a

dryad. Had the prizes been of my choosing, she should have had a gift more

poetical than a guinea."

Haward opened the coach door, and stood gravely aside while she entered

the vehicle and took her seat, depositing her flowers upon the cushions

beside her. The Colonel stirred, uncrossed his legs, yawned, pulled the

handkerchief from his face, and opened his eyes.

"Faith!" he exclaimed, straightening himself, and taking up his radiant

humor where, upon falling-asleep, he had let it drop. "The way must have

suddenly become smooth as a road in Venice, for I've felt no jolting this

half hour. Flowers, Evelyn? and Haward afoot? You've been on a woodland

saunter, then, while I enacted Solomon's sluggard!" The worthy parent's

eyes began to twinkle. "What flowers did you find? They have strange

blooms here, and yet I warrant that even in these woods one might come

across London pride and none-so-pretty and forget-me-not"-His daughter smiled, and asked him some idle question about the May-apple

and the Judas-tree. The master of Westover was a treasure house of

sprightly lore. Within ten minutes he had visited Palestine, paid his

compliments to the ancient herbalists, and landed again in his own coach,

to find in his late audience a somewhat distraite daughter and a friend

in a brown study. The coach was lumbering on toward Williamsburgh, and

Haward, with level gaze and hand closed tightly upon his horse's reins,

rode by the window, while the lady, sitting in her corner with downcast

eyes, fingered the dogwood blooms that were not paler than her face.

The Colonel's wits were keen. One glance, a lift of his arched brows, the

merest ghost of a smile, and, dragging the younger man with him, he

plunged into politics. Invective against a refractory House of Burgesses

brought them a quarter of a mile upon their way; the necessity for an act

to encourage adventurers in iron works carried them past a milldam; and

frauds in the customs enabled them to reach a crossroads ordinary, where

the Colonel ordered a halt, and called for a tankard of ale. A slipshod,

blue-eyed Cherry brought it, and spoke her thanks in broad Scotch for the

shilling which the gay Colonel flung tinkling into the measure.