By Edith Barnard

It began on a very beautiful morning in early June. The roses in the rectory garden were all a-bloom, great white clouds were floating as near to earth as they dared, songbirds were busy with nests and nestlings, and the very young rector came out of his house to enjoy it all. It had been his house for only a few weeks; he was so young as a rector that this was his first charge, and so young as a man that he longed to lay aside his clerical suit and go swimming or fishing. He was both old enough and young enough, however, to enjoy every cloud and blossom and song; he was far from those monotonous years of middle life when one day is much like another.

His rectory garden was, indeed, a charming one. His parishioners had seen to that. The rectory was new and looked old, the garden was new and looked old; even the hedge that surrounded the garden and churchyard was tall of growth, but had been planted only a year or so. The church was the fashionable house of worship for the fashionable new village—the village just far enough out of town to make a convenient between-season resting place for those favored townsfolk who could spend their time as they spent their money—pretty much as they willed. They wanted their church and rectory to be as beautiful and Old-World like as possible, and they had made them so.

The rector was not one for whose idle hands his arch-enemy might find mischief; he had come out to his piazza whistling, his hands in his pockets; but he saw at a glance that the roses bordering his front walk would look the better for a little trimming, and straightway he set to work. Still whistling, busy with knife and twine, happy as a school-boy whittling a man-o’-war, he did not notice that some one came through the little gate, and stood quite near, behind him.

A small voice said: “Good-morning!”

The young rector turned quickly, and beheld an amazingly red little figure. Her frock was red, her shoes and stockings were red, and her over-large hat was red. She wore white kid gloves and carried a small red cardcase. But her little face was not red; it was white, very white, and framed in a mass of flying black hair; her eyes were black, too, and large and wide opened. The rector stared at the brilliant little figure; she might have been the picture of an elf-child, were it not for the amusing imitations of grown-up conventionalities, the gloves and cardcase.

“Good-morning!” she said again, in just the same tone.

“Oh! I beg your pardon! Good-morning!” said the rector.

“You are the new rector, I know,” said the child. “I am Miss Torrington, and I’ve come to call on your wife and daughters.”

The rector’s stare turned into a look of frank amazement, even bewilderment. “My—I beg your pardon; I’m afraid I don’t quite understand!”

“I’ve come to call on your wife and daughters,” repeated the little girl. “I’m Miss Virginia Witherspoon Torrington,” she declared convincingly, “and I live next door to you—over there, in the big house.”

“Oh, yes, I see,” replied the rector. He was as punctiliously polite as the occasion demanded, but his mouth twitched just a little. “I’m sure I beg your pardon. I must be very stupid. But I regret to say that I have no wife or daughters.”

“Are you sure you haven’t” asked Miss Torrington.

“I’m afraid I am,” said the rector, humbly and apologetically. “Won’t you come in and call on me instead?”

Miss Torrington pondered for a moment. “I think a gentleman ought to pay the first call on a lady, don’t you?”

The rector bit his lip, but the child went on: “Maggie O’Brien certainly told me there were three ladies in the family here!”

“Oh!” exclaimed the young rector, as if he had found something. “Why, of course, there are! I didn’t think of that! There are three ladies, and it’s very good of you to call on them. They’ll be delighted. You see, it was your speaking of my wife and daughters that made me forget.”

“What are they, then?” asked the child.

“One is my grandmother, and the others are my aunts.”

“Oh, really? I should think you’d like the grandmother one. You know if you don’t have a grandmother already you can’t ever get one, and you can get a wife and daughters.”

“That’s very true,” acknowledged the rector. “I suppose you haven’t a grandmother yourself?”

“No, but I have a father—an only father. You know what that is, I suppose; only fathers are a great deal of care. Mine needs a lot of looking after.”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” suggested the rector. “I’ll lend you my grandmother once in a while! That is, if you will come over and help me occasionally, I will. I hope you’ll have the time to come. You don’t have to look after your father every minute, do you?”

“Oh, no,” she replied. “He’s away a good deal. But I think I ought to see her before I borrow her, don’t you?”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said the rector again. “If you’ll come into the house I’ll call her, and my aunts, too. I’m so glad you don’t mind their not being my wife and daughters.”

He held open for her the door of the little parlor, and was starting toward the stairs when Miss Torrington called: “Oh—er—!”

When the rector turned toward her she said: “I’d like to send up my cards, please. I don’t often get a chance to use them, you know, and—”

The rector said, gravely: “I quite understand. I ought to have thought of it. I never send my own cards up to them, and I suppose that’s why I forgot.” He was about to take them in his hand, but Miss Torrington drew them back.

“Maggie O’Brien always takes them on a silver tray. I’m very partic’lar about it at my house.”

The rectory owned no silver tray, but there was a silver butter-dish, a valued family heirloom, much too large and fine for every-day use. It was kept on the sideboard in the tiny dining-room. The rector gravely brought it; Miss Torrington seemed quite satisfied, even a little awed at its elegance, and deposited her cards upon it.

That was the way her first visit began; it ended in ginger cookies, and hugs and kisses from the grandmother, and tremulous tears, mixed with laughter, from the aunts. On the second visit she went all over the little place with the rector; together they hunted for eggs—the younger aunt owned four hens and a rooster. They plucked delicious red strawberries, and gathered a bunch of red roses. There were two acres of greenhouses on the grounds of the big house—but these were really, truly roses, roses meant to be gathered.

On her third visit she made herself at home, and from that day she owned the rectory, the grandmother, the aunts, and the rector. In everything but years he was as young as she, and sometimes she was as old as he. All through the summer they played together, for the child blossomed into rosiness, and her father came to rely more and more on the advice of the aunts and the borrowed grandmother concerning her. She flitted between the two houses, and that was the way she won her name. The young rector would say:

“Come, little Ladybird, fly away home”—and home was on either side of the hedge. The name stayed with her always, for it suited her well—the black-eyed little elf-child in her red frocks.

The second summer brought her back early, flying through the gate into the arms of the borrowed grandmother, hugging the aunts while they laughed and exclaimed over her growth, and dancing up and down before the young rector, who was far more glad to get her back than he himself knew. They taught each other many things that summer—to fish and to climb trees, to say rimes which some day might catch fairies, to throw stones straight, and to make dolls into Indians and early Christian martyrs.

One day the rector, while writing a sermon, saw through his study window an unusual movement in the hedge just opposite. His window opened to the floor, so he went out of it, on tiptoe, to investigate. Ladybird was on the ground, trying to manage a very large saw, and scraping away with all her might at the trunk of one of the hedge plants. When the rector stood over her she looked up and laughed.

“I wanted to surprise you, old parson,” she said. “I’m going to cut a hole in the hedge; it takes too long to go around by the gates!”

The rector remonstrated, but she had her way, and before long there was a plainly marked path from the gap in the hedge to the study window. It was even more plainly marked during the third summer, for they began to read together, and the study held a new world for her. There were no books at the big house, and the rectory held more of books than of anything else, except peace and gentleness. The next year the borrowed grandmother was not there to welcome her, but the play and the study went on.

When she was twelve she asked him the first question concerning himself. She was sitting on the sill of the long window, her thin little elbows on her knees, her chin in her little claw-like hands; she was looking at the clouds and the sunset, without seeing either. The rector could no longer see to write, and had come to the window to watch the glowing west.

Whenever she scolded him, or was very serious, she would use his name. After a while she asked “Mark, why do you stay in the country?”

“It’s a good place to stay in, isn’t it?” he answered.

“Yes, of course. But father said that you had been asked to go to St. John’s in town. He said you were—you—Why do you stay here, Mark?”

The young rector stood looking over her head at the sunset and made no reply. Ladybird looked up at him, then out toward the west again.

“I know why, Mark! They wouldn’t like the town.”

“They’ve always had the country, you know,” he said simply. “They were so happy to come here, and they love it.”

Presently he lifted her up. “Good-night, Ladybird,” he said gaily. “Fly away home!” But she walked slowly that night, and the rector went back to his sermon, which was on the simple life; his parishioners loved theories.

When Ladybird was fourteen, the rector found her one day weeping over a novel. That night he talked for hours with her father and when she came the next day she told him, delightedly and proudly, but just a little tearfully, that she was going to boarding-school. For two summers she did not come back, but at sixteen she took him again for her confidant, telling him all about the boys, the flowers and notes they sent, what she said in return, how this one had mournful eyes and that one did dance like a dream. He enjoyed it all, and teased her, and after that there were no further breaks in their friendship. She wrote him from time to time, and he knew all her love affairs by heart, and laughed immoderately over them. When she was eighteen she came back for a few weeks, and they were weeks of delight at the rectory; she made them love her all over again, and after she had left for Europe the rector kept the shade of the long window pulled down, until the grass had grown up again on the little path through the hedge.

A year or two after that her father became governor of his State, and Ladybird became Miss Torrington indeed. She wrote long, infrequent letters to the rector, and to the one old aunt; they heard of her through every one, and when she came back to open the big house for a great house-party they saw for themselves how beautiful and charming and gracious she was, and they guessed how many people beside themselves loved her. Even then, with all the house full, she would sometimes steal off, toward sunset time, and flit through the gap in the hedge to the rectory.

Then, after a year or two more, she came back to stay longer, not in red now, but in black. The elderly cousin who lived with her took the care of the house, and Ladybird, in her first loneliness, sought out her oldest friend. She made him drive with her, walk with her, read with her, and he obeyed her will by day and lay wakeful at night, with aching heart and stricken conscience. They read over the old books together, and almost all of their talks began with: “Oh, do you remember?” They went together very often to the grave of the dear borrowed grandmother; Ladybird tried to make some ginger cookies by the old recipe, but they were not very good. They got up at dawn one day, and went fishing again, and as in the old days Ladybird caught all the fish, and wouldn’t take them off the hook. Their favorite walk was along the crest of the hill; there they could look down on the church and the big house, and all the other houses and their beautiful parks. From there they could watch the sunset best, and there it was even cooler and quieter than in the rectory garden.

One day they sat on the rock ledge until the red glow of the setting sun had nearly faded. Their talk had ceased. The man was sitting below the girl, and she looked down at his head; there were gray hairs here and there. Her lips trembled a little, and she leaned over farther. The rector looked up; he found her face close to his.

“Mark,” she began, but he sprang up quickly and held out his hands:

“Come, little Ladybird, fly away home!” The girl did not move.

“No,” she said. “Sit down. I want to say something to you.”

He said again imperatively: “No. Come, Ladybird! It is damp here. It is too near the clouds!” She saw how white his face had grown, and her own flushed; they went down without speaking.

After that day the rector became very busy with parish work, and resolutely refused to take any more walks or drives. Guests came to the big house, and after that more guests and more. There was one who came more often than the others, and at the end of the summer the rector watched him drive away with Ladybird. She had come to bid him good-by, but he had basely hidden himself upstairs!

During the winter that followed the rectory heard from her but seldom. Rumors came of her engagement; the rumors were denied, then re-affirmed. The old aunt declared that the child would have written at once if they were true; the rector made no comment. In the spring he made some changes in his garden, and when the roses bloomed he busied himself there more than he had ever done before. One warm June day, while he way tying up the swaying branches that bordered his front walk, and thinking of the quaint little red-frocked elf-child who had come to him there years before, she came through the gate and up the walk toward him, her hands outstretched, her face all gladness and youth and beauty. “I’ve come here first,” she cried. “I’ve come to call!”

They both laughed, and went in to see the old aunt, the lapse of all the years bridged over between them. She begged to be allowed to stay to tea, and declared the biscuits the most delicious that even the rectory oven had ever baked, and the gooseberry jam as good as ever. After tea she went, uninvited, to the rector’s study. She stood for an instant in the doorway, looking around the familiar room; then she looked up at the man standing beside her, and moved toward the long window. “Come with me to the hedge, old parson,” she called, and before he could answer she flitted through the window and toward the familiar gap.

When he reached her side he found her standing with tightly clasped hands. She heard him come, and cried: “Oh, Mark, Mark, what is it? Who put it there?”

The rector had no voice to answer her, and after a moment of waiting she turned to him. “Did you put that there? Did you, did you put that there?” Still he made no answer, and with a sob she moved off toward the gate. Then he spoke.

“Oh, Ladybird, Ladybird, I had to! Don’t go away like that! Ladybird—see—it is a rosebush, a red rose, Ladybird. I tell you I had to! Virginia!”

But she had run through the rectory gate, and was already on her way to the big house. For weeks after that he did not see her. She came to the rectory only when he was away, and again there were guests at the big house, and again one guest who came more frequently than all the others. The rector came upon this young man one day, down by the river. He was looking very unhappy indeed, so evidently unhappy that the rector, accustomed as he was to respond to all appeals for pity and mercy, involuntarily stopped. The young man held out his hand.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, and laughed a little. “I see you know what’s up with me. I didn’t know I was such a fool as to show it.”

“I ought not to have stopped,” said the rector. “I beg your pardon.” He would have gone on, but the boy touched his arm.

“Please don’t say that, sir. I’d rather have seen you than any one else I know. In fact, I was coming to the rectory—later. I thought perhaps I could get you to help me out, sir.”

The rector winced a little at the boy’s deference, but asked: “What is it?”

Again the other laughed, somewhat ruefully. “Oh, I’m sure you know,” he said. “I’ve loved her ever since my freshman year, when she was at boarding-school. She’s never done anything else but turn me down, but she says this has got to be the last time. I thought if you could be persuaded to say a word to her, sir, she might look at it differently. She cares more for you than for any one else, and you’ve always been like a father to her, sir!”

The rector looked at the honest, boyish face, and said: “I’ll do as you ask.”

Therefore, an hour later, Ladybird was standing before him, in her own drawing-room, her cheeks flaming with anger. “Did he ask you to come here, or did you come of your own accord?” she demanded.

“Both, Virginia,” answered the truthful rector meekly.

“Don’t you dare to call me Virginia,” she commanded. “You know I hate it! If you came of your own accord you are an interfering person, and if you came because he told you to, you’re a—you’re a—”

“The boy loves you very much, Virginia, and I think he’d make you a good husband.”

“Do you want me to marry him? Are you tired of looking at me?”

“I think he would make you a good husband.”

“Do you want to see me married?”

The rector got up, and started for the door, but she stood in front of him. “Was that why you planted the rosebush in the hedge?” she asked. He bowed before her, and she watched him grow pale. Then she laughed, a little low, tender laugh, and—kissed him. The rector was dimly aware of her swift rush from the room, and of his own going home blindly.

The next day he left his house early, to walk over the hills to the home of a distant poor parishioner; coming home late in the afternoon he came upon her, seated on the ledge of rock upon the hillcrest. She walked calmly to meet him, and standing bravely before him she asked him the question. It was then that the rector discovered that the Angel with which he had been struggling was not, as he had believed, the Angel of Temptation, but, indeed, the Angel of Life. As they walked down later, in the red glow, hand in hand, he asked:

“Do you remember, Ladybird, the cards on the silver butter-dish?”

She laughed and said: “And those first ginger cookies?”

“Do you remember the day you were up in the apple tree, Ladybird, and hit me with an apple?”

“And that was before I learned to ‘throw straight,’ too!”

“You were very repentant, so we went fishing the next day. You leaned over the brook to see yourself, and your hair fell into the water.”

“It wasn’t very long,” she laughed.

“How long is it now, Ladybird?” he asked.

She pursed up her lips. “Oh, longer,” she said.

At the edge of the woods they stood for a last look at the churchyard below. “Can you give up the other life, Ladybird?” he asked seriously.

“There is no other,” she replied softly.

“Oh, Ladybird, Ladybird, when will you come home?” he cried.

She shook her head at him, laughing. “Oh, parson, old parson, you couldn’t ask one great, important question, but you’re a genius at asking silly ones!”