40 IDLEHURST : 



Alice was coming home that night. I knew that on 

 such a morning as this she would be early up the 

 hill and in the garden, with a hundred histories of 

 her travels, and uncounted questions about old friends 

 of the flowers and beasts. I was sitting under the 

 yew hedge, and had just allowed the protest which 

 all the temper of the day seemed to make against the 

 Euripides I had opened half an hour before, when 

 I saw her come in at the meadow gate a vision of 

 pink frock and yellow hair unbound, the one some 

 inches lower, the other as much higher in the world 

 than at our last meeting, as befits eleven. She 

 did not see me ; and as she came up the grass walk 

 she first of all fell on her knees beside the great 

 clump of daffodils at the corner, with an odd little 

 cry of endearment, and a caressing way with the 

 hands that nobly refrained from picking and stealing. 

 The moment after she sprang to her feet, and began 

 to dance up the path, at first perhaps with some little 

 toe-pointing and the school-chassez not wholly for- 

 gotten, but after the first three steps with nothing 

 more than the hop-skip-and-jump of a child too 

 happy to be still, the expression of delight in per- 

 fectly light and graceful motion. She had a bunch 

 of wild daffodils in her hand which acted thyrsus ; 

 and pink frock, hair ribbon, shoe-strap and all, she 



