The Sherwood Ring (25 page)

of a sudden, when you've never actually been happy for a minute in your whole life — I don't quite know what to do with it. It can't be real. I keep feeling that it will go away if I touch it."

"Wait till you're trying to darn my socks in the deplorable flat behind the red brick university," said Pat. "That'll be real, it will. Mrs. Dykemann says she doesn't understand what it is that I do to them. They won't go away, either. It's all right, my darling. I said you could have as long as you liked. Meanwhile, if you don't mind, I think I will put my arm around you again, so that you can start getting accustomed to that, too."

He put his arm around me again, and we went on leaning against the gate. A little rippling wave of happiness creamed suddenly around my feet, and receded again, and came back more strongly, like a tide beginning to come in on the turn.

"Peggy!" said Pat suddenly.

"Yes."

"There's something I suppose I ought to tell you."

"What is it, Pat?"

Pat did not answer for a moment, and when I glanced up I saw to my surprise that he had turned his head away and was looking down the slope over the apple trees and frowning.

"What is it, Pat? What's the matter?"

"I suppose you could call it a secret."

"This seems to be our day for secrets. What is it?

What were you going to tell me?"

"It's about my name."

"But you told me about your name. I've got it all straight now. The title is Thorne, and the family name is Sherwood, and the Christian name is Patrick in full, and — is there anything else?"

"Not exactly — I mean, the trouble is it's not exactly Patrick," explained Pat, confusedly. "I only wish it was. They begin with the same letter, that's all. I made up the 'Pat' myself when I went away to school because I knew what would happen if the other boys ever found out about the real one. I've always hated it. It sounds so silly."

I stared up at him for an instant in complete bewilderment, and then suddenly remembered something and understood.

"Pat! You don't mean to say it can really be — "

"Yes, I'm afraid so," Pat interrupted me hurriedly. "Now you know. I must love you, or I'd never have told you. I've always tried to keep it such a dead secret in the family. Why don't you stay quiet for a bit and just look at the view? You're not going to get a view like that when you're darning a basketful of socks somewhere behind the red brick university."

It was that last moment at the end of a clear summer afternoon when the air is completely still and all the colors seem most rich and intense. Rest-and-be-thankful lay hushed in the silence under the circling curve of the hill and the dark vastness of Martin's Wood. Never had it looked so beautiful, so like a house in a fairy tale caught out of the living world and sleeping away the centuries in some enchanted dream. Through the trees I could see the great chimneys, and the corner of the room in the north gable where Uncle Enos slept, and the yellow roses growing over the long windows that opened on the terrace below. I could see one of the great urns heaped with ivy and rose geranium, and the four figures standing beside it leaning in a cluster against the gray balustrade. The marvelous light caught first the scarlet uniform and then the blue one, the coppery gold of one girl's hair, and the shimmering rose gown of the other. They were looking up at us and laughing. Then the first stir of the evening wind swept the leaves of the apple trees together, and they were gone.

I stood there gazing down at the dreaming house for another long moment. Then quite deliberately I turned around in the circle of Pat's arm, so that the view was completely and most happily limited to his shoulder and the line of his jaw and the way his eyebrows came together in a little frown whenever he was embarrassed or thinking hard about something.

"Tell me about the red brick university, Peaceable," I said.