“Roger!”

He turns at once.

“Ask her to show you Algy’s bracelet,” I say, with an awkward laugh; and then, thoroughly afraid of the effect of my bomb-shell, and not daring to see what sort it is, I turn and run quickly away.

The end of the hour and a half finds me punctually peering through the bars again.  Well, I am first at the rendezvous.  This, perhaps, is not very surprising, as I have not given him one moment’s law.  For the first five minutes, I am very fairly happy and content.  The lark is still fluttering in strong rapture up in the heights of the sky; and for these five minutes I listen to him, soothed and hallowed.  But, after they are past, it is different.  God’s bird may be silent, as far as I am concerned:  not a verse more of his clear psalm do I hear.  An uneasy devil of jealousy has entered into me, and stopped my ears.  I take hold of the bars of the gate, and peer through, as far as my head will go:  then I open it, and, stealing on tiptoe up the drive a little way, to the first corner, look warily round it.  Not a sign of him!  Not a sound!  Not even a whisper of air to rustle the glistening laurel-leaves, or stir the flat laurestine-sprays.

I return to the road, and inculcate patience on myself.  Why may not I take a lesson in easy-mindedness from Vick?  Was not it Hartley Coleridge who suggested that perhaps dogs have a language of smell; and that what to us is a noisome smell, is to them a beautiful poem?  If so, Vick is searching for lyrics and epics in the ditch.  I stroll along the wintry brown hedge-row, and begin to pick Roger a little, scant nosegay.  He shall see how patient I am! how unsulky! with what sunny mildness I can wait his leisure!  I have already two or three snow-drops in my breast, that I picked as I came through the garden.  To these I add a drooping hazel-tassel or two, and a little bit of honeysuckle-leaf, just breaking greenly into life.  This is all I can find—­all the scentless first-fruits of the baby year.

It is ten minutes past the due time now.  Again I listen intently, as I listened yesterday, for his coming.  There is a sound now; but, alas! not the right one!  It is the rumbling of an approaching carriage.  A pony-chaise bowls past.  The occupants are acquaintances of mine, and we bow and smile to each other.  As long as they are in sight, I affect to be diligently botanizing in the hedge.  When they have disappeared, I sit down on a heap of stones, and take out my watch for the hundredth time; a whole quarter of an hour!

“He does not relish the notion of his wife’s tramping up and down this muddy road by herself, does not he?” say I, speaking out loud, and gnashing my teeth.