He heard someone going by in the lane behind him. He would not look round—it annoyed him to think of people seeing him in this position. His once eminent discretion, though overthrown, still made muffled protests at the afternoon’s enterprise. The feet down the lane stopped close at hand.
“Stare away,” said Lewisham between his teeth. And then began mysterious noises, a violent rustle of hedge twigs, a something like a very light foot-tapping.
Curiosity boarded Lewisham and carried him after the briefest struggle. He looked round, and there she was, her back to him, reaching after the spiky blossoming blackthorn that crested the opposite hedge. Remarkable accident! She had not seen him!
In a moment Lewisham’s legs were flying over the stile. He went down the steps in the bank with such impetus that it carried him up into the prickly bushes beside her. “Allow me,” he said, too excited to see she was not astonished.
“Mr. Lewisham!” she said in feigned surprise, and stood away to give him room at the blackthorn.
“Which spike will you have?” he cried, overjoyed. “The whitest? The highest? Any!”
“That piece,” she chose haphazard, “with the black spike sticking out from it.”
A mass of snowy blossom it was against the April sky, and Lewisham, straggling for it—it was by no means the most accessible—saw with fantastic satisfaction a lengthy scratch flash white on his hand, and turn to red.
“Higher up the lane,” he said, descending triumphant and breathless, “there is blackthorn.... This cannot compare for a moment....”
She laughed and looked at him as he stood there flushed, his eyes triumphant, with an unpremeditated approval. In church, in the gallery, with his face foreshortened, he had been effective in a way, but this was different. “Show me,” she said, though she knew this was the only place for blackthorn for a mile in either direction.
“I knew I should see you,” he said, by way of answer, “I felt sure I should see you to-day.”
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