Warning Hill by John P. Marquand Page B

pleasant that he stood there, not knowing what to answer, and it seemed to him again that soft hands were touching his face.
    â€œYou like me, don’t you?” Marianne inquired.
    Tommy nodded slowly.
    â€œWell, I don’t mind,” said Marianne. She smoothed the ruffles of her dress with a thin little nervous hand, and laughed. It was very pleasant to hear her laugh. It was like the singing of the birds, it seemed to Tommy, and the whispering of the wind.
    â€œI knew you did,” said Marianne, “I could tell.”
    â€œHow?” asked Tommy.
    â€œI don’t know, but I could tell,” said Marianne.
    Tommy saw that she was looking at him, at his shoes and trousers, and at his sun-bleached shirt. It was that frank unwavering curiosity of a child, which sees everything without the light of charity or expedience. Tommy realized he was as different from her as a being from a different world. Tommy became aware that his shoes were caked with rich salt mud. His trousers, never very passable, were also muddy. Such things had made little difference where he came from, but on that lawn, beside the impeccable whiteness of Marianne, he felt a proper twinge of awkwardness. His shirt, of a sort known as the Garibaldi blouse, was secured about his middle by a string—a “stomach string,” Tommy called it, which he now noticed had become undone and was twining rakishly about his legs. He found himself blushing with a new shame as he endeavored to push it back.
    â€œThis isn’t my best clothes,” Tommy explained. “I’ve got a blue suit I wear to church.”
    â€œOh,” said Marianne, “I don’t mind, but we’d better go and sit under that tree, perhaps. If one of the gardeners came, he might not know what to think.”
    â€œWhat,” said Tommy, “would he think?”
    Yet even then he must have had an inkling of what she meant.
    â€œOh, nothing,” said Marianne.
    She skipped before him, nervously across the grass, now and then looking over her shoulder to see if he would follow, just as Lorna Doone had done in the Valley of the Doones. She stopped beneath a young copper beech with bending branches which nearly touched the grass.
    â€œSit down,” said Marianne. “It’s—it’s really cooler here.”
    She paused and patted the pleats of her dress and looked at him from the corner of her eye.
    â€œIt’s funny,” said Marianne, “I know who you are. I’ve seen you lots of times.”
    â€œYou’ve seen me?” stammered Tommy, and it seemed a most peculiar thing that she should have ever seen him.
    â€œYes,” said Marianne, “often when I go driving. I’ve seen you by the gates of that old house with a cupola on top. I’ve wondered who you were.”
    Tommy felt his face grow red.
    â€œIt’s my house,” he explained. “It may be old, but it’s a pretty big house.”
    Then he wondered for the first time, if she had invited him beneath that beech so that no one else might see him. It was not a pleasant thought, but it would not go away.
    â€œWhat do you do?” asked Marianne.
    â€œDo?” echoed Tommy. “I milk the cow and split the wood, and help my mother inside.”
    â€œDo you?” said Marianne. “I’ve wondered what boys did down there. What else?”
    â€œI work,” said Tommy, “for Mr. Cooper in the bank, running errands, sweeping out in the afternoon, winters, and all day, summers. I’ve got to help at home.”
    â€œOh,” said Marianne, and that was all. The decorous smoothness of the lawn, everything, seemed to be laughing at Tommy Michael.
    Then in that way in which a mind will flash back sometimes, Tommy remembered who she was. It was on the road to Michael’s Harbor long ago. A carriage was coming down that road, with a body of yellow and red panelling upon it, and its wheels made a shining