“My command? I told you to wait for me.”
“You told me something else,” laughed Arthur. “You spent all the morning instructing me for it, you know.”
“Oh!” said Helen. It was a broad and very much prolonged “Oh,” for a sudden light was dawning upon the girl; as it came her frown gave place to a look of delight.
“You have been writing me a poem!” she cried, eagerly.
“Yes,” said Arthur.
“Oh, you dear boy!” Helen laughed. “Then I do forgive you; but you ought to have told me, for I had to walk home all alone, and I've been worrying about you. I never once thought of the poem.”
“The muses call without warning,” laughed Arthur, “and one has to obey them, you know.”
“Oh, oh!” exclaimed the other. “And so you've been wandering around the woods all this time, making verses! And you've been waving your arms and talking to yourself, and doing all sorts of crazy things, I know!” Then as she saw Arthur flush, she went on: “I was sure of it! And you ran away so that I wouldn't see you! Oh, I wish I'd known; I'd have hunted you up and never come home until I'd found you.”
As was usual with Helen, her momentary vexation had gone like April rain, and all her seriousness had vanished with it. She forgot all about the last scene in the woods, and Arthur was once more the friend of her girlhood, whom she might take by the hand when she chose, and with whom she might be as free and happy as when she was alone with the flowers and the wind. It seemed as if Arthur too had vented all his pent up emotion, and returned to his natural cheerful self.
“Tell me,” she cried, “did you put in all the things I told you about?”