The Thracian sighed, as looming through the mist The stone came whirling back. “Fool,” said the ghost, “Then mine at worst is everlasting hope!” Again up rose the stone.
Holding the paper clasped against her breast, again Brooke’s thoughts sought counsel of the river, but now between her and it, a silhouette standing against the water, on the slope below the ploughman guided the horses to and fro unceasingly across the corn-field.
April flew by on the wings of the migrating birds, and it was almost the last week, that brought the fragile wind flower to the wood edges and the swallows to the old barn, before Brooke realized that the month had fairly begun. For not more relentless is the rush of the city itself than life on a farm in the springtime, when the power that drives is the vital force of Nature herself, while a day dropped at this time slips back beyond recall.
One morning, in herding a refractory hen, who had strayed with her brood out among the young oats, Brooke had found herself close by the spot where Henry Maarten was planting potatoes, and, half laughing and wholly out of breath, she called to him for help, which call he answered by catching the clucking, scratching hen, while she gathered the brood in her apron, and he followed her silently back to the chicken yard at a respectful distance.
Having put the chicks safely in a coop, Brooke pointed out a shorter way across the flower garden by which Maarten might return to his work. Seeing that he paused by the straggling clumps of early tulips and daffodils that were already in bloom, and thinking they might be reminding him of some other garden for which he was homesick, she bade him gather as many as he wished, asked him if he was fond of flowers, and whether he would not like some roots, seeds, or cuttings for his little place, saying in a friendly way, to put him at his ease, for he always seemed to dread her presence, “They tell me you are painting and repairing to make a home at the Bisbee place for some one who is coming over in the autumn. Nothing is so homelike to a woman as growing flowers.”
Pulling his hat over his eyes with a gesture of embarrassment rather than because the sun was bright, he said, in carefully pronounced musical English, with a decided foreign accent: “And they told you that I make a home for a sweetheart who comes? Yes, I had thought to; but if she comes not, what then?”
