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XIX
HERSELF

After all, it was as if I had first been told about refraction and then had been shown a rainbow. For presently Calliope herself said something to me of her having been twenty. One would as lief have broken the reticence of a rainbow as that of Calliope, but rainbows are not always reticent. I have known them suggest infinite things.

In June she spent a fortnight with me at Oldmoxon house, and I wanted never to let her go. Often our talk was as irrelevant to patency as are wings. That day I had been telling her some splendid inconsequent dream of mine. It had to do with an affair of a wheelbarrow of roses, which I was tying on my trees in the garden directly the original blossoms fell off.

Calliope nodded in entire acceptance.

"But that wasn't so queer as my dream," she said. "My dream about myself – I mean my rill, true regular self," she added, with a manner of testing me.

I think that we all dream our real, true, regular selves, only we do not dream us until we come true. I said something of this to Calliope; and then she told me.

"It was when I was twenty," she said, "an' it was a little while after – well, things wasn't so very happy for me. But first thing I must tell you about the picture. We didn't have so very many pictures. But in my room used to be an old steel engraving of a poet, a man walkin' 'round under some kind o' trees in blossom. He had a beautiful face an' a look on it like he see heaven. I use' to look at the picture an' look at it, an' when I did, it seemed almost like I was off somewheres else.

"Then one night I had my dream. I thought I was walkin' down a long road, green an' shady an' quite wide, an' fields around an' no folks. I know I was hurryin' – oh, I was in such a hurry to see somebody, seems though, somebody I was goin' to see when I got to the end o' the road. An' I was so happy – did you ever dream o' being happy, I mean if you wasn't so very happy in rill life? It puts you in mind o' havin' a pain in your side an' then gettin' in one big, deep breath when the pain don't hurt. In rill life I was lonesome, an' I hated Friendship an' I wanted to get away – to go to the City to take music, or go anywheres else. I never had any what you might call rill pleasure excep' walkin' in the Depot Woods. That was a gully grove beyond the railroad track, an' I use' to like to sit in there some, by myself. I wasn't ever rill happy, though, them days, but in the dream – oh, I was happy, like on a nice mornin', only more so."

Calliope looked at me fleetingly, as if she were measuring my ability to understand.

"The funny part of it was," she said, "that in the dream I wasn't me at all. Not me, as you know me. I thought somehow I was that poet in my picture, the man in the steel engravin' with a look like he see heaven. An' it didn't seem strange to me, but just like it had always been so. I thought I rilly was that poet that I'd looked at in the picture all my life. But then I guess after all that part wasn't so funny as the rest of it. For down at the end o' the road somebody was waitin' for me under trees all in blossom, like the picture, too. It was a girl, standin' there. An' I thought I looked at her – I, the poet, you know – an' I see that the girl was me, Calliope Marsh, lookin' just like I looked every day, natural as anything. Like you see yourself in the glass.

"I know I wasn't su'prised at all. We met like we was friends, both livin' here in the village, an' we walked down the road together like it had always been that way. An' we talked – like you do when you're with them you'd rather be with than anybody else. I thought we was goin' somewhere to see somebody, an' we talked about that: —

"'Will They be home, do you think?' I says.

"An' the girl that was me says: 'Oh, yes. They'll be home. They're always home,' she told me. An' we both felt pleased, like when you're sure.

"An' then – oh," Calliope cried, "I wish I could remember what we said. I wish I could remember. I know it was something that seemed beautiful, an' the words come all soft. It was like bein' born again, somewheres else. An' we knew just exactly what each other meant, an' that was best of all."

She hesitated, seeking to explain that to me.

"When I was twenty," she said, "I use' to want to talk about things that wasn't commonly mentioned here in Friendship – I mean, well, like little things I'd read about noted people an' what they said an' done – an' like that. But when you brought 'em up in the conversation, folks always thought you was tryin' to show off. An' if you quoted a verse o' poetry in company, my land, there was a hush like you'd swore. So gradually I'd got to keepin' still about such things. But in that dream we talked an' talked – said things about old noted folks right out an' told about 'em without beginnin' it 'I happened to read the other day.' An' I know I mentioned the sun on the leaves an' the way the clouds looked, right out, too, without bein' afraid the girl that was me would think I was affected. An' I said little things about – oh, like about goblins in the wood an' figgers in the smoke, without bein' scared that mothers would hear of it an' not let their children come to see me. An' then I made up things an' said – things I was always wantin' to say – like about expectin' to meet Summer walkin' down the road, an' so on: things that if I'd said so's they'd got out around Friendship, folks would 'a' thought I was queer an' not to be trusted to bring up their mail from town. I said all those kind o' things, like I was really born to talk what I thought about. An' the girl that was me understood what I meant. An' we laughed a good deal – oh, how we laughed together. That was 'most the best of all.

"Well, the dream dwindled off, like they will. An' when I woke up, I was nothin' but Calliope Marsh, livin' in Friendship where folks cut a loaf o' bread on a baker's headstone just because he was a baker. Rill life didn't get any better, an' I was more an' more lonesome in Friendship. Somehow, nobody here in town rilly matched me. They all knew what I said well enough, but when I spoke to 'em about what was rill interestin' to me, seemed like their minds didn't click, with that good little feelin' o' rilly takin' it in. My i-dees didn't seem to fit, quite ball an' socket, into nobody's mind, but just to slide along over. And as to their i-dees – I rec'lect thinkin' that the three R's meant to 'em Relations, Recipes, an' the Remains. Yes, all I did have, you might say, was my walks out in the Depot Woods. An' times like when Elder Jacob Sykes – that was Silas's father – said in church that God come down to be Moses's undertaker, I run off there to the woods feelin' all sick an' skinned in soul, an' it sort o' seemed like the gully understood. An' still, you can't be friends when they's only one of you. It's like tryin' to hold a dust-pan an' sweep the dirt in at the same time. It can't be done – not thorough. An' so settin' out there I used to take a book an' hunt up nice little things an' learn different verses, in the hopes that if that dream should come back, I could have 'em to tell – tell 'em, you know, to the girl that was me. Because it hed got so by then that it seemed to me I was actually more that poet than I was Calliope Marsh. An' so it went along till the day I met him – the man, the poet."

"The man!" I said. "But do you mean the man – the poet – the one that was you?"

Calliope nodded confidently.

"Yes," she said, in her delicate excitement, "I do. Oh, I'll tell you an' you'll see for yourself it must 'a' been him. It was one early afternoon towards the end o' summer, an' I knew him in a minute. I'd gone up to the depot to mail a postal on the Through, an' he got off the train an' went into the Telegraph Office. An' the train pulled out an' left him – it was down to the end o' the platform before he come out. He didn't act, though, as if the train's leavin' him was much of anything to notice. He just went up an' commenced talkin' to the baggageman, Bill. But Bill couldn't understand him – Bill was sort o' crusted over the mind – you had to say things over an' over again to him, an' even then he 'most always took it different from what you meant. So I suppose that was why the man left him an' come towards me.

"When I looked up in his face I stood still on the platform. He was young. An' he had soft hair, an' his face was beautiful, like he see heaven. It wasn't to say he was exactly like my picture," Calliope said slowly. "For instance, I think the man at the depot had a beard, an' the poet in my picture didn't. But it was more his look, you might say. It wasn't like any look I'd ever seen on anybody in Friendship. His hands were kind o' slim an' wanderin', an' he carried a book like it was his only baggage. An' he had a way – well, like what he happened to be doin' wasn't all day to him. Like he was partly there, but mostly somewheres else, where everything was better.

"'Perhaps this lady will know,' he says – an' it wasn't the way most of 'em talks here in Friendship, you understand – 'I've been askin' the luggageman there,' he says, an' he was smilin' almost like a laugh at what he thought I was goin' to answer, 'I've been askin' the luggageman there, if he knows of a wood near the station that I shall be likely to find haunted at this hour. I've to wait for the 4.20, an' it's a bad time of day for a haunted wood, I'm afraid. The luggageman didn't seem to know.'

"An' then all at once I knew – I knew. Why, don't you see," Calliope cried, "I had to know! That was just the way we'd talked in my dream – kind of jokin' an' yet meanin' somethin', too – so's you felt all lifted up an' out o' the ordinary. An' then I knew who he was an' I see how everything was. Why, the girl that was me an' that was lonesome there in Friendship wasn't me, very much. Me bein' Calliope Marsh was the chance part, an' didn't count. But things was rilly the way I'd dreamed o' their bein.' Somehow, I had another self. An' I had dreamed o' bein' that self. An' there he stood, on the Friendship depot platform."

Calliope looked at me wistfully.

"You don't think I sound crazy, do you?" she asked.

And at my answer: —

"Well," she said, brightening, "that was how it was. An' it was like there hadn't been any first time an' like there wouldn't be any end. Like they was things bigger than time – an' lots nicer than life. An' I spoke up like I'd always known him.

"'Why, yes,' I says to him simple, 'you must mean the Depot Woods,' I said. 'They're always kind o' haunted to me. I guess the little folks that come in the en-gine smoke live in there,' I told him, smilin' because I was so glad.

"I remember how su'prised he looked an' how his face lit up, like he was hearin' English in a heathen land.

"'Upon my word,' he says, still only half believin' in me. 'An' do you go there often?' he ask' me. 'An' I daresay the little smoke folk talk to you, now?' he says.

"'I go 'most every day,' I told him, 'but we don't say very much. I guess they talk an' I listen,' I says.

"An' then the funny part about his askin' Bill for a haunted wood come over me.

"'Bill!' I says. 'Did you actually ask Bill that?'

"Oh, an' how we laughed – how we laughed. Just the way the dream had been. It seemed – it seemed such a sort o' special comical," Calliope said, "an' not like a Sodality laugh. 'Seems though I'd always laughed at one set o' things all my life – my everyday life. An' this was a new recipe for Laugh, flavoured different, an' baked in a quick oven, an' et hot.

"Well, we walked down the road together, like it had always been that way. An' we talked – like you do when you're with them you'd rather be with than anybody else. An' he ask' me, grave as grave, about the little smoke folks.

"'Will They be home, do you think?' he says.

"An' I says: 'Oh, yes. I know They will. They're always home.'

"An' we both felt pleased, like when you're sure.

"We went to walk in the Depot Woods. I remember how much he made me talk – more than I'd ever talked before, excep' in the dream. I know I told him the little stories I'd read about noted people, an' I said over some o' the verses I'd learned an' liked the sound of – I remembered 'em all for him, an' he listened an' heard 'em all just the way I'd said 'em. That was it – he heard it all just the way I said it. An' I mentioned the sun on the leaves an' the way the clouds looked, right out – an' I knew he didn't think I was affected. An' I made up things an' said, too – things that was always comin' in my head an' that I was always wantin' to say. An' he'd laugh almost before I was through – oh, it was like heaven to have him laugh an' not just say, 'What on earth are you talkin', Calliope Marsh?' like I'd heard. An' he kep' sayin', 'I know, I know,' like he knew what I meant better than anything else in the world. Then he read to me out o' the book he had an' he told me – beautiful things. Some of 'em I remember – I've remembered always. Some of 'em I forgot till I come on 'em, now an' then, in books – long afterwards; an' then it was like somebody dead spoke up. I'm always thankful to get hold o' other people's books an' see if mebbe I won't find somethin' else he said. But a good many o' the things I s'pose I clear forgot, an' I won't know 'em again till in the next life. Like I forgot what we said in the dream, till they're both all mixed up an' shinin'.

"We talked till 'most time for the 4.20 train. An' when it got towards four o'clock, I told him about my dream. It seemed like he ought to know, somehow. An' I told him how I dreamed I was him.

"'You don't look like the one I dreamed I was,' I told him, 'but, oh, you talk the same – an' you pretend, an' you laugh, an' you seem the same. An' your face looks different from folks here in Friendship, just like his, an' it seems somehow like you saw things besides with your eyes,' I told him, 'like the poet in my picture. So I know it's you – it must be you,' I says.

"He looked at me so queer an' sudden an' long.

"'I'm a poet, too,' he said, 'if it comes to that. A very bad one, you know – but a kind of poet.'

"An' then of course I was certain sure.

"When he understood all about it, I remember how he looked at me. An' he says: —

"'Well, an' who knows? Who knows?'

"He sat a long time without sayin' anything. But I wasn't unhappy, even when he seemed so sad. I couldn't be, because it was so much to know what I knew.

"'If I can,' he says to me on the depot platform, 'dead or alive, I'll come back some day to see you. But meanwhile you must forget me. Only the dream – keep the dream,' he says.

"I tried to dream it again," Calliope told me, "but I never could. An' dead or alive, he's never been back, all these years. I don't even know his name – an' I remembered afterwards he hadn't asked me mine. But I guess all that is the chance part, an' it don't really count. Out o' the dream I've been, you might say, caught, tied up an' couldn't get out, – just me, like you know me, – with a big unhappiness, an' like that. But in the dream I dreamed myself true. An' then God let me meet myself, just that once, there in the Depot Woods, to show me it's all right, an' that they's things that's bigger than time an' lots nicer than life."

Calliope sat silent, with her way of sighing and looking by; and it was as if she had suggested to me delicate things, as a rainbow will suggest them.

XX
THE HIDINGS OF POWER

I divined the birches, blurred gray and white against the fog-bound cedars. In the haze the airy trunks, because of their imminence, bore the reality of thought, but the sterner green sank in the distance to the faint avail of speech. It was well to be walking on the Plank Road toward seven o'clock of a June morning, in a mist which might yield fellowship in the same ease with which it breathed on distinctions.

Abel had told how, on that winter way of his among the hills, the sky has fallen in the fog and had surrendered to him a fellowship of dreams. But in Friendship Village, as I had often thought, there are dreams for every one; how should it be otherwise to us faring up and down Daphne Street (where Daphne's feet have been)? And yet that morning on the Plank Road where, if the fancy seized her to walk in beauty, our lady of the laurels might be met at any moment, her power seemed to me to be as frail as wings, and I thought that it would not greatly matter if I were to meet her.

As if my thought of Abel Halsey had brought him, the beat of hoofs won toward me from the village; and presently Major Mary overtook me, and there was Abel, driving with his eyes shut. I hailed him, laughed at him, let him pick me up, and we went on through door after door of the fog, with now a lintel of boughs and now a wall of wild roses.

"Abel," I remember saying abruptly, "dreams are not enough."

"No," he replied, as simply as if we had been talking of it, "dreams are just one of the sources of power … but doing is enough."

I said weakly – perhaps because it was a morning of chill and fog, when a woman may feel her forlornest, look her plainest, know herself for dust: "But then – what about everybody's heart?"

"Don't you know?" Abel asked, and even after those months in Friendship Village I did not know.

"… use it up making some little corner better – better – better by the width of a hand…" said Abel. "As I could do," he added after a moment, "if I could get my chapel in the hills. Do you know, I've written to Mrs. Proudfit about it at last. I couldn't help it – I couldn't help it!"

We came to the rise of the hill, where, but for the fog, we might have looked back on the village, already long astir. To the left, within its line of field stone and whitewashed rails and wild roses, the cemetery lay, like another way of speech. A little before us the mist hid the tracks, but we heard the whistle of the Fast Mail, coming in from the end of the earth.

"Ah, well, I want some wild roses," said I – since a woman may always take certain refuges from life.

"I'm coming back about noon," Abel told me; "I'll bring you a thousand."

He drew up Major Mary, and we sat silent, watching for the train. And the Something which found in Abel its unfailing channel came companioning us, and caught me up so that I longed unspeakably to be about the Business which Abel and Calliope followed, and followed before all else.

But when I would have said more, I noted on Abel's face some surprise, and then I myself felt it. For the Fast Mail from the East, having as usual come roaring through Friendship station with but an instant's stop, was now slowing at the draw. Through the thick white we perceived it motionless for a breath, and then we heard it beat away again.

I wonder now, remembering, how I can have known with such singing confidence what was in store for me. It is certain that I did know, even though in the mist I saw no one alight. But as if at a summons I bade Abel let me descend, and somehow I gave him good-by; and I recall that I cried back to him: —

"Abel! You said the sky can fall and give one dreams."

"Yes," he answered. "Dreams to use in one's corner."

But I knew then and I know now that Abel's dreams flowed in his blood, and that when he gave them to his corner of the world he gave from his own veins; and I think that the world is the richer for that.

When he had gone I stood still in the road, waiting. I distinguished a lintel of elms, a wall of wild roses; I heard a brave little bird twittering impatient matins, and the sound of nearing footsteps in the road. And then a voice in the mist said my name.

There in the fog on the Plank Road we met as if there had come a clearness everywhere – we two, between whom lay that year since my coming to Friendship. Only, now that he was with me, I observed that the traitor year had slipped away as if it had never been, and had left us two alone in a place so sightly that at last I recognized my own happiness. And I understood – and this way of understanding leaves one a breathless being – that his happiness was there too.

And yet it was only: "You… But what an adventure to meet you here!" And from him: "Me. Here. Please, may we go to your house? I haven't had an indication of breakfast." At which we laughed somewhat, with my, "How absurdly like you not to have had breakfast," and his, "How very shabby of you to feel superior because you happen to have had your coffee." So we moved back down the road with the clear little space in the fog following, following…

A kind of passion for detail seized on us both.

He said: "You're wearing brown. I've never seen you wear brown – I'm sure I haven't. Have I?"

"My fur coat was brown," I escaped into the subject, "but then that hardly counts."

"No," he agreed, "fur isn't a colour. Fur is just fur. No, I've never seen you in brown."

"How did they let you off at the draw? How did you know about getting off at the draw?" I demanded.

"You said something of your getting off there – in that one letter, you know…"

"Yes, yes…"

"You said something about getting off there on a night when you left the train with a girl who was coming home to the village – you know the letter?" he broke off, "I think it was that letter that finally gave me courage to come. Because in that I saw in you something new and – understanding. Well, and I remembered about the draw. I always meant to get off there, when I came."

"You always meant … but then how did you make them stop?"

"I told the man I had to, and then he had to, too. There were four others who got off and went across the tracks, but we are not obliged to consider them."

"From that," I said, "I would think it is you, if I didn't know it couldn't possibly be!"

Then I hurried into some recital about the Topladys, whose big barn and little house were lined faintly out as if something were making them feel hushed; and about Friendship, hidden in the valley as if it were suddenly of lesser import – how strange that these things should be there as they were an hour ago. And so we came to Oldmoxon House and went up the walk in silence save that, at the steps, "How long shall I tell them to boil your eggs?" I asked desperately, to still the quite ridiculous singing of the known world. But then the singing took one voice, a voice whose firmness made it almost hard, save that deep within it something was beating…

"You know," said the voice simply, "if I come in now, I come to stay. You do know?"

"You come to breakfast…" I tried it.

"I come to stay."

"You mean – "

"I come to stay."

I rather hoped to affirm something gracious, and masterful of myself – not to say of him; but suddenly that whole lonely year was back again, most of it in my throat. And though I gave up saying anything at all, I cannot have been unintelligible. Indeed, I know that I was not unintelligible, for when, in a little while, Calliope, who was still with me, opened my front door and emerged briskly to the veranda, she seems to have understood in a minute.

"Well said!" Calliope cried, and made a little swoop down from the threshold and stood before us, one hand in mine and one outstretched for his; "I knew, as soon as I woke up this morning, I felt special. I thought it was my soul, sittin' up in my chest, an' wantin' me to spry round with it some, like it does. But I guess now it was this. Oh, this!" she said. "Oh, I sp'ose I'd rilly ought to hev an introduction before I jump up an' down, hadn't I?"

"No need in the world, Calliope," he told her; "come on. I'll jump, too."

And that was an added joy – that he had read and re-read that one Friendship letter of mine, written on the night of Delia More's return, until it was as if he, too, knew Calliope. But before all things was the wonder of the justice and the grace which had made the letter of that night, when I, too, "took stock," yield such return.

It was Calliope who led the way indoors at last, and he and I who followed like her guests. From the edges of consciousness I finally drew some discernment of the place of coffee and rolls in a beneficent universe, and presently we three sat at his breakfast table. And not until then did Calliope remember her other news.

"Land, land," she said, "I like to forgot. Who do you s'pose I had a telephone from just before you come? Delia. She'd just got home this morning on the Fast Mail. An' the Proudfits'll be here, noon train."

Delia indeed had come on the same glorified train that Abel and I had seen stop at the draw, only she had alighted at Friendship station and had hurried up to the Proudfits' to make ready for their home-coming. And since those whom we know best never come to Friendship without a welcome, it was instantly incumbent on us all to be what Calliope called "up in arms an' flyin' round."

As soon as we were alone: —

"I've planned noon lunch for 'em," Calliope told me; "I'm goin' to see to the meat – leg o' lamb, sissin' hot, an' a big bowl o' mint. Mis' Holcomb's got to freeze a freezer o' her lemon ice – she gets it smooth as a mud pie. Mis' Toplady, she'll come in on the baked stuff – raised rolls an' a big devil's food. An' – I'd kind o' meant to look to you for the salad, but I s'pose you won't want to bother now…" And when I had hastened to assume the salad, "Well, I am glad," she owned, with a relieved sigh. "The Proudfit salads they can't a soul tell what ingredients is in 'em, chew high though we may. I know you know about them queer organs an' canned sea reptiles they use now in cookin'. I've come to the solemn conclusion I ain't studied physiology an' the animal sciences close enough myself to make a rill up-to-date salad."

Before noon we were all at Proudfit House – to which I had taken care to leave word for Abel to follow me – and we were letting in the sun, making ready the table, filling the vases with garden roses; and in the library Calliope laid a fire "in case they get chilly, travellin' so," she said, but I think rather it was in longing somehow to summon a secret agency to that place where Linda Proudfit's portrait hung. For we had long been agreed that, as soon as she was at home again, Linda's mother must be told all that we knew of Linda. Thus, to Calliope and me, the time held a tragic meaning beneath the exterior of our simple cheer. But the time held many meanings, as a time will hold them; and the Voice of its new meaning said to me, as we all waited on the Proudfit veranda with its vines and its climbing rose and its canaries: —

"I marvel, I marvel at your bad taste. How can you leave the dear place and the dear people for me?"

I love to recall the bustle of that arriving and how, as the motor came up the drive, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss and Mis' Amanda ran down on the gravel and waved their aprons; and how Mis' Postmaster Sykes and Mis' Mayor Uppers and Mis' Photographer Sturgis, having heard the machine pass their doors, had issued forth and followed it and arrived at the Proudfits' with:

"I was right in the midst of a basque, cuttin' over an old lining, but I told Liddy Ember: 'You rip on. I've got to run over.' Excuse my looks. Well said! Back!"

And, "Got here, did you? My, my, all tired out, I expect. Well, mebbe you think we won't feel relieved to see the house open again an' folks in it flyin' round. An' you look as natural as the first thunder-storm in the spring o' the year!"

And, "Every day for two weeks," Mis' Sturgis said, "I've said to Jimmy: 'Proudfits back?' 'No, sir,' s'he, 'not back yet.' An' so it went. Could you sleep any on the sleeper?"

Then Calliope and Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb and the three newcomers hurried all but abreast to the kitchen to "see what they could find"; and when Mis' Proudfit and Miss Clementina and Delia More had taken their places at the burdened table, we all sat about the edge of the room – no one would share in the feast, every one having to "get right back" – and asked of the journey, and gave news of Friendship Village in the long absence. I love to remember it all, but I think that I love best to remember their delicate acceptance of what that day had brought to me. Of this no one said a word, nor did they ask me anything, or seem to observe, far less to wonder. But when they passed me, one and another and another squeezed my hand or patted my arm or gave me their unwonted "dear."

"What gentlefolk they are," my stranger said.

"Noon lunch" was finished, and I had seen Calliope go with Madame Proudfit to the library and close the door, and we were all gathered in the hall, where Miss Clementina had opened a trunk and was showing us some pretty things, when some one else crossed the veranda and appeared in the doorway. And there was Abel, come with my wild roses.

I do not think, however, that it can have occurred to Abel that I was in the room. Nor that any of the others were there, intent on the pretty things of Miss Clementina's trunk. But, his face shining, he went straight to Delia More; and he laid my roses in her arms, looking at her the while with a look which was like a passionate recognition of one not met for many years.

I have said nothing of Delia More as she seemed to me that day of her return, for indeed I do not well know how to tell of her. But as he looked at her, it was all in Abel's eyes. I do not know whether it was that her spirit having been long "packed down in her," as Calliope had said, was at last loosed by the mysterious ministry of distance and the touch of far places, or whether, over there nearer Tempe, she had held converse with Daphne herself, who, for the sake of the Friendship bond between them, had taken for her own all that was wild and strange in the girl's nature. But this I know: that Delia More had come back among us a new creature, simple, gentle, humble as before, and yet somehow quickened, invested with the dignity of personality which, long ago, she had lost. And now she stood looking at Abel as he was looking at her.

"Delia!" he said, and took her hand, and, "I brought you some wild roses to tell you we're glad you're back," said he, disposing of my hedge spoils as coolly as if I were not.