The Magpies Nest Read Free

a fairy-tale. To the end of her days gifts gave her that same unreasoning pleasure. It was one of her most endearing traits.
     
     

CHAPTER II
    NO one knew better than Hope that the rickety dresser atop of which she perched had a castor loose and must not be tempted by even one unwary wriggle. So she sat very still, almost holding her breath, confining her skirts with a hand on either side. The faded blue silk kerchief worn as a dusting cap, the cross-over bib apron and slim ankles, revealed by a treacherously short skirt, made her look not unlike a rustic Dresden figurine set there for ornament. Even her incongruously dainty buckled shoes helped the illusion, though they did not assort with the cotton frock she had not dared to change to run the gauntlet of the housekeeper's eye. Besides, she had not a better frock, but the shoes she could not have done without. She had that flair for dressing; she knew the essential points.
    So she sat, waiting and watching Evan Hardy, who smoked a cigarette and laughed at her. The fear of a tumble did not deter her, but there was no assurance that she would alight feet first, in the approved manner of cats and young ladies. And that was quaintly characteristic of Hope, since she was in Evan Hardy's room, and he had himself placed her in her elevated position.
    "What are you thinking of?" he questioned her idly.
    "You," she said gravely. "I wonder..."
    "What?"
    "You won't tell me." She felt very sure of that.
    "I will if you'll give me a kiss."
    "I want to get down, please."
    "Come down, then. And I'll tell you anything you like," he promised, holding out his arms to her.
    She slipped into them. He carried her to a chair.
    "Now, what do you want to know?"
    Curled up in his arms like a kitten, she rubbed her cheek ingratiatingly against his silk négligé shirt. Hesmelled pleasantly of Florida water and talcum powder, which was agreeable to her. His face was the fine oval sometimes seen in the healthy Englishman of good lineage—he was half-Cornish, half-Irish. Hehad crisp, clean-looking brown hair, blue eyes, the mouth of a young lover. There was nothing evil in hi: face anywhere, nor in his heart. Neither was there anything great. Years afterward, when Time had swallowed him, Hope was conscious of a certain affectionate gratitude toward him, half for what he was, half for what he was not. But then she was seventeen and quite unaware of cause for gratitude.
    "Are you comfortable?" he asked.
    "Not very," she answered, squirming slightly "I've got a crick in my neck."
    "Don't you like to sit on my knee?"
    "No."
    "Why? Don't you like me?"
    "Oh, yes—sure I do. But I don't much like being touched."
    "Nor kissed?"
    "No one ever kissed me but you."
    "No schoolboy sweethearts?"
    But he believed her when she said: "Never had any."
    "Don't you like that?" He kissed her.
    At his first kiss, no long time before, she had thought the earth slipping from beneath her feet. In some strange way it had reached her imaginative spirit and left her blood unquickened; there was all romance and nothing of passion in it. Her temperament was still too closely sheathed in its northern ice to wake to one kiss. But when she thought of it still it had power to arrest her mind and hold her, dreamy-eyed, with caught breath, her white teeth denting her lower lip, remembering it and the hours she had spent afterward in her room alone, with her face hidden in a pillow, still conscious of the soft pressure of his mouth on hers. What was still more strange, now his caresses left her cool and a trifle petulant; she endured them only for liking's sake. Evan did not want to trouble her, only to understand. So he asked:
    "Are you afraid of me?"
    "No." There was very little that Hope was afraid of.
    "What, then?"
    "I want to know," she burst out, with plaintive despair, "why you like to kiss me!" And indeed, she did. "It—it bores me, rather. You seem to like it. Why?"
    "Good Lord!" He stared, a picture of amazement.
    "Bores