Merry Go Round Read Online Free PDF

formal; but the boy's manifest delight in her presence affected her so that she became gay and light-hearted. Then he displayed a new side of his character: the rather strenuous passion for the beautiful was momentarily put aside and he showed himself quite absurdly boyish. His laughter rang out joyously, and, feeling less shy now that Miss Langton was his guest, he talked unrestrainedly of a hundred topics that sprang up one after another in his mind.
    'Will you have a cigarette?' he asked when they had finished their tea, and, on Bella's laughing refusal: 'You don't mind if I smoke, do you? I can talk better.'
    He drew their chairs to the open window, so that they could look at the massive masonry before them, and, as though he had known Bella all his life, chattered on. But when at last she rose to go, his eyes grew suddenly grave and sad.
    'I shall see you again, shan't I? I don't want to lose you now I've found you so strangely.'
    Really he was asking Miss Langton to make an assignation, but by now the Dean's daughter had thrown all caution to the winds.
    'I dare say we shall meet sometime in the cathedral.'
    Womanlike, though she meant to grant all he desired, she would not give in too quickly.
    'Oh, that won't do,' he insisted. 'I can't wait a week before seeing you again.'
    Bella smiled at him while he looked eagerly into her eyes, holding her hand very firmly, as though till she made some promise he would never let it go.
    'Let's take a walk in the country tomorrow,' he said.
    'Very well,' she replied, telling herself that there could be no harm in going with a boy twenty years younger than herself. 'I shall be at the Westgate at half-past five.'
    But the evening brought counsels of prudence, and Miss Langton wrote a note to say that she had forgotten an engagement, and was afraid she could not come. Yet it left her irresolute, and more than once she reproached herself because from sheer timidity she would cause Herbert Field the keenest disappointment. She told herself sophistically that perhaps, owing to the Sunday delivery, the letter had not reached him, and, fearing he would go to the Westgate and not understand her absence, persuaded herself that it was needful to go there and explain in person why she could not take the promised walk.
    The Westgate was an ancient, handsome pile of masonry which in the old days had marked the outer wall of Tercanbury, and even now, though on one side houses had been built, a road to the left led directly into the country. When Bella arrived, somewhat early, Herbert was already waiting for her, and he looked peculiarly young in his straw hat.
    'Didn't you get a note from me?' she asked.
    'Yes,' he answered, smiling.
    'Then why did you come?'
    'Because I thought you might change your mind. I didn't altogether believe in the engagement. I wanted you so badly that I fancied you couldn't help yourself. I felt you must come.'
    'And if I hadn't?'
    'Well, I should have waited. ... Don't be horrid. Look at the sunshine calling us. Yesterday we had the grey stones of the cathedral; today we've got the green fields and the trees. Don't you feel the west wind murmuring delicious things?'
    Bella looked at him, and could not resist the passionate appeal of his eyes.
    'I suppose I must do as you choose,' she answered.
    And together they set off. Miss Langton, convinced that her interest was no less maternal than when she gave jellies to some motherless child, knew not that Dan Cupid, laughing at her subterfuge, danced gleefully about them and shot his silver arrows. They sauntered by a gentle stream that ran northward to the sea, shaded by leafy willows; and the country on that July afternoon was fresh and scented: the cut hay, drying, gave out an exquisite perfume, and the birds were hushed.
    'I'm glad you live in the Deanery,' he said; 'I shall like to think of you seated in that beautiful garden.'
    'Have you ever seen it?'
    'No; but I can imagine what it is like behind that old red wall,