The Heart's Kingdom

"They are producing in the sweat of their brows while I--saunter," I

said to myself, as I stretched out my bare arm from which the white silk

sleeve had been rolled away after the prevailing mode of the sport for

which it was designed, and flexed and regarded the bunch of muscles that

knotted themselves on my smooth, tanned forearm.

"It could swing a wash tub as well as the best racquet this side of

the Meadowbrook Club," I added aloud with a queer kind of primitive

shame mixed with my physical pride in myself.

"Or juggle a heavy baby and a kitchen stove into a square meal?" added a

laughing voice as the Jaguar padded up beside my shoulder on his tennis

shoes before I had heard him at all, so deep was my absorption in my own

judgment and absolution of myself.

"Still I was put out just a few minutes ago by a woman half my size," I

laughed in return as the long strides shortened into harmony with mine.

"I heard about it and ran after you to ask you to come back or, if you

refused, to let me go with you wherever you are going. I left Mother

Spurlock in charge of the newly installed Epworth Leaguers. Charlotte

disapproved of my coming and said so," and we both laughed in delight

over my strenuous name-daughter.

"Are you asking me quo vadis?" I demanded, with a look at him out of a

corner of my eye that got in return a glint of the jewels under dull

gold that always infuriated as well as interested me.

"'Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge--'"

the parson suddenly chanted under his breath, using the old Gregorian

measure for the few words of the oldest song of impersonal love extant.

"Thank you for bringing Martha's boy up to the Little House. Jacob has

refused both Mother Spurlock and me to let him come."

"I didn't bring him. He and the pup brought me and then he was stolen

from me into the fold, as it were," I answered as I paused at the front

gate of the Poplars, which had a white clematis drifting over its tall

stone pillars and clutching at the straight iron bars as if trying to

keep me out of even my own fold. "Will you come in with me?" I asked

with a laugh, as I flung the old gate wide in spite of the tendril

fingers.

The parson laughed, whistled a strain of his "whither thou goest" chant

to me and followed me across the lawn to the foot of the poplars. On the

bench surrounding their trunks I found my basket with the fine seam I

was sewing for the Suckling in it and I dropped upon the thick mat of

grass on the very edge of the shadow from the silver branches above and

began to hunt for my thimble, leaving the Jaguar standing over me.