THE GODDESS.

One sultry afternoon Roscoria—the vices of boyhood vexing overmuch his burdened heart—betook himself to green meadows with a volume of Plato. He had announced his intention of reading in the same until he had cooled down, a process which usually took him precisely three hours. Long before he was expected, however, he was heard by Tregurtha coming along the bridge over the moat toward his front window, and presently he sprung in by the same, with an excited look in his eyes and the manner of a man who has a fact to tell.

"Save you, Tregurtha! I am hit hard," was his greeting.

"I beg your pardon," said Tregurtha, politely, looking up from a piece of carpentering.

"Did you ever hear, Dick, of love at first sight?"

"Yes; and a very shady proceeding it always seemed to me, if, indeed, it be not a chimera. But, Roscoria, you are not feeling anything in your head, are you? Giddiness, perhaps? A feeling as if you had lost your memory? I hope it's nothing serious; but, my dear fellow, the sun was rather hot when you started."

"You great ass! I tell you it is not the head that is affected; it's the heart."

"Same thing, dear boy."

"I have seen, Tregurtha—I have seen an Olympian goddess treading the grass of a nineteenth-century field!"

"You've seen a milkmaid!"

"Richard, if I thought I could annihilate you, I would try. She was majestic, pensive, golden-haired, distracting; a daughter of the gods, I swear."

"My dear sir, I think you had better take it easy," interposed Tregurtha anxiously. "Take the armchair near the window, and open your grief. There really is no hurry."

Roscoria was at last induced to sit down, Tregurtha standing by him, with bent brows of perplexity, in his shirt-sleeves, with his hammer still in his hand. Louis began his recital by a torrent of Greek, comparing his mysterious goddess to almost every heroine of antiquity, and using so great a multitude of compound adjectives and fantastic turns of speech that his hearer faintly seized a newspaper and fanned himself therewith.

"As it is some time since I was at school, Roscoria," interpolated his friend on the first opportunity, "you will excuse me if I do not quite follow you. If you could speak English mainly, I would pardon the use of a few Grecisms."

"I am sorry," said Roscoria, "and, by Jupiter, will try to speak of her in English. Listen. I was taking my solitary ramble through a field skirting a beautiful little wood of Sir John Villiers', filled with wild hyacinths. I had my eyes fixed on my book for a long while, but when I lifted them, what think you, friend, they saw?"

"From the way in which you have carried on, I should imagine a woman."

Roscoria looked up in admiration at his friend's sagacity.

"She came straight by me, walking softly and dreamily, looking aside at the blue hyacinths, and her hat was held in her hand, so that the sun shone on her wonderful hair till it scintillated like a shower of gold. She was tall, yes; but she had an air so ethereal, and in her white dress she showed so like a cloud, that I held my breath lest she should vanish. I thought, indeed, she was some mystic vision I had conjured up from Plato's pages—the Absolute Good she might have been—she was so fair, so spiritual, and the air was so still around us; and there were we alone in the summer silence."

"Did she speak?" inquired Tregurtha (for he was a sailor, and his friend's manner was impressive).

"When she saw me standing still before her she dropped her eyes and made for a gate leading into the wood. The fastening was troublesome, so I went and opened it for her. She turned as she passed through, and bent her head—with a queenliness, heavens!—and smiled and whispered a word of thanks. I saw her eyes then for an instant; they—but I ought not to speak of them, and, after all, I don't know what color they were. She walked a short distance whilst I was shutting the gate again, and I was not the man to spoil her solitude, so I went off very fast; but looking back just once—only once, Tregurtha—I saw her standing amongst those blue-bells, gathering them, whilst the sunbeams slanted through the pale green larch boughs on to that glinting, golden head. After all, what immense possibilities this world contains! I believe this—this vision to have been the daughter of a mortal man who was once a boy, probably also a schoolboy! But then there was a woman in the case."

"Thank you, old fellow," said Richard, consulting his watch: "this has been very instructive; just as good as 'Half-hours with the best Poets;' but I suppose we must all descend to commonplace. You must tone yourself down and come to supper."

"Supper!" gasped Roscoria, blankly.

"Supper," retorted Tregurtha, firmly. "You shall note that not all your boys are overcome by an affaire de coeur, and that if you keep them waiting much longer there will be a bread riot. Here is comfort for you. The Tremenheeres give a tennis party; hie you to it, and if this Oread of yours be mortal, she will surely there be found. It is a good way to distinguish women from angels: the former, if young, can scarcely resist a party."