All
in white she was, and of a stuff so thin that her baby curves of
innocence showed through it, and the little smock slipped low down
over her rosy shoulders, and her little toes curled pink in the
green of the grass, for she had no shoes on, having run away, before
she was dressed, by some oversight of her black nurse, and down from
her head, over all her tiny body, hiding all save the merest glimmer
of the loveliness of her face, fell the most wonderful shower of
gold locks that ever a baby of only two years old possessed. She sat
there with the sunlight glancing on her through a rift in the trees,
all in a web of gold, floating and flying on the May wind, and for a
minute, I, being well instructed in such lore, thought she was no
mortal child, but something more, as she was indeed, but in another
sense.

I stood there, and looked and looked, and she still pulled up tiny
handfuls of the green grass, and never turned nor knew me near, when
suddenly there burst with a speed like a storm, and a storm indeed
it was of brute life, with loud stamps of a very fury of sound which
shook the earth as with a mighty tread of thunder, out of a thicker
part of the wood, a great black stallion on a morning gallop with
all the freedom of the spring and youth firing his blood, and one
step more and his iron hoofs would have crushed the child. But I was
first. I flung myself upon her and threw her like a feather to one
side, and that was the last I knew for a while. When I knew myself
again there was a mighty pain in my shoulder, which seemed to be the
centre of my whole existence by reason of it, and there was the feel
of baby kisses on my lips. The courage of her blood was in that tiny
maid. She had no thought of flight nor tears, though she knew not
but that black thunderbolt would return, and she knew not what my
ghastly silence meant. She had crept close to me, though she might
well have been bruised, such a tender thing she was, by the rough
fling I had given her, and was trying to kiss me awake as she did
her father. And I, rude boy, all unversed in grace and tenderness,
and hitherto all unsought of love, felt her soft lips on mine, and,
looking, saw that baby face all clouded about with gold, and I loved
her forever.

I knew not how to talk to a little petted treasure of life like
that, and I dared not speak, but I looked at her, and she seemed not
to be afraid, but laughed with a merriment of triumph at seeing me
awake,