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Page 37
It was a devious way to the ruins of the old stone mill,--down
unfrequented roads, through meadow gates, and over a narrow pasture lot,
then up a little hill and into a cool beech woods, where the peace of
the summer reigned unbroken. Piloted by Lloyd, they reached the place
just as Mrs. Sherman drove in from the opposite side of the woods.
The vacant windows of the old mill seemed staring in surprise at the
gay party gathering on the hill above it, although it should have been
accustomed to all kinds of picnics by this time, considering the number
of generations it had watched them come and go. Nobody could tell how
long it had been since the mill wheel turned its last round and the
miller ground his last grist, but if the stones could babble secrets
like the little spring, trickling down the rocky bank, they would have
had many an interesting tale to tell of all that had happened in their
hearing.
There were many names and initials carved in the bark of the old
beech-trees. Malcolm found his father's and mother's on one, as he
wandered around with Eugenia, and set to work to cut his own underneath.
Eugenia seated herself on a rock near by, to watch him. Keith and Rob,
and the other boys who had been invited to the picnic, busied themselves
by dragging up sticks and logs for a big bonfire. The girls began a game
of "I spy" behind the great rock where the columbines clambered in the
spring, and spread their blossoms like butterflies poised on an airy
stem.
"Come on, Eugenia," they called, but she shrugged her shoulders with
what the girls called a "young ladified air," and turned to Malcolm with
a coquettish glance of her big black eyes.
"I know whose initials you are going to cut with yours," she said.
"Whose?" asked Malcolm, digging away at a capital M.
"Oh, I'll not tell, but I know well enough. There's only one that you
_could_ cut, you know."
"You needn't be so sure about that," said Malcolm, loftily. "I know
plenty of names that I wouldn't mind cutting here in this tree with
mine."
"With a heart around them, like the ones on this tree?" she asked,
pointing to a rude carving on the trunk against which she leaned.
"Yes, with a heart around them," he repeated.
"But there's only one name you would carve that way, and put an _arrow_
through it," she said, meaningly. "At any rate, a silver arrow. Oh,
maybe you think I haven't seen her wear it, and blush when I teased her
about it."
Malcolm went on cutting, without an answer. He had admired Eugenia more
than any girl he had ever seen, but somehow this speech jarred on him.
It did not seem exactly ladylike for her to insist on twitting him in
such a personal way about his friendship for the Little Colonel. _She_
would never have done such a thing, he felt quite sure. For a moment he
half wished that it was Lloyd sitting on the rock beside him, but
Eugenia could be very entertaining when she chose, and she was trying
her best now to make an agreeable impression on this handsome boy who
seemed so fond of Lloyd. She wanted to be first in his attentions, and,
as usual, she had her way.
"I told you so!" she cried, presently, as a large capital L appeared
under Malcolm's initials. "I knew you just couldn't help making an L,
and the next one will be an S."
"I'm not done yet," he said, with a smiling side-glance at her, and
added two more lines, changing the L to an E. An expression of pleasure
flashed across her face, as he outlined an F next to it. It would be
something to tell Mollie and Fay and Kell next time she wrote, that the
handsomest boy in Kentucky (as she enthusiastically described him to
them), with the manners of a Sir Philip Sidney, had left the record of
his attachment for her where all might read.
She gave him another smile from under her long black eyelashes, and then
looked down with a blush. He added the heart to the inscription then,
and pierced it with an arrow.
While these two played at a game that older children had played before
them for many a generation (as the scarred old tree-trunks bore silent
witness on every hand), the game of "I spy" went on uproariously behind
the columbine rock. The bonfire blazed higher and higher. It lighted the
cool depths of the darkening woods, and sent dancing shadows across the
deep ravines, and presently the picnic feast was spread near by and part
of the supper was cooked over its coals.
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