It was perhaps due to the thickness of my skull and the strength of my neck and shoulders that I was preserved from broken bones, for in falling I had turned clean over, and so pitched right upon my crown, just as a cat will always fall upon her feet. However, my head is a thick and somewhat wooden one, and after a time I sat up, and by dint of hard rubbing brought back my wits to their proper place, not without a feeling that they had else gone a woolgathering, and a knowledge that my forehead and neck ached as though I had fallen from the church tower. Yet I minded the aches and pains not so much as that the stormcock’s nest still hung swaying in the branches high above me. For I had never, since being first put into breeches, liked to be beaten in anything, and I now reflected that the stormcock had proved itself my master.
While I sat rubbing my head, and wondering what Jacob Trusty would say to my tumble, I heard a sound which made me pause and listen. It was the voice of a girl singing in the wood close by, a pure, sweet, clear voice, though childish, and the words it sang were these:
“Spring is coming o’er the hill!
Primrose pale and daffodil,
Daisies white and rosy,
Now are springing from the soil.
Tread ye lightly, lest ye spoil
My Lady’s posy.“Bring me, from some mossy stone,
Violets that all alone
Burst to perfect flower.
These, with snowdrops pure and white,
Wet with morning’s dew, shall light
My Lady’s bower!”
Now as this song went on, the sounds came nearer and nearer, and at length I saw, coming up the path by which I had climbed towards the sheepfold, a girl who carried a little basket of primroses and violets in one hand, and swung her little hood in the other. She saw me not as she came along the path, for I lay there still as any mouse, wondering who she might be. But when she came into the clearing and looked round her, she espied me, and stopped short as she was beginning another verse of her song. And so there we were, neither saying aught, but both staring wide-eyed at each other. And now if I were a poet or a spinner of fine words, such as they use in courts and fashionable places, I might perhaps tell you with justice how my dear love, as she came to be in after years, looked upon that afternoon when I first set eyes upon her. For though she was then but a child of eight years old, she was already so bewitching that I could not but gaze at her with something like wonder in my lad’s heart. She was like Little Red Riding Hood in the fairy tale, for her hood, swinging loosely from her tiny brown hand, was red, and the little cloak above her gray, homespun gown was red, and she had dainty scarlet shoes upon her feet such as I had never seen. As for her face, it was dark and gipsy-like, and her hair, black as night, tumbled loosely on each side, and fell across her shoulders; and her eyes, large and wondering as she looked at me, were darker than her hair. Yet can I give no true account of her with words, for it would need the brush of some great painter to represent her as she seemed to me then, and as I remember her to this day.
Now, when we had looked at each other for some minutes I tried to rise to my feet. But the buzzing in my head was by no means gone, and I was no sooner up than down again. Wherewith my new acquaintance cast down her basket and ran to me, and looked at me with pitying eyes.
“Oh,” cried she, “you are hurt, poor boy!”
“Nay,” quoth I, “ ’tis nought. I have tumbled from higher trees than yon elm.”
But she stayed not to hear me, but seized upon my cap and ran away, and presently came back with water in it, with which she wet my forehead like any skilled nurse, all the time telling me to lie still lest in rising 1 grew sick and fainted away. Howbeit, I, like all lads, grew restive under female treatment, and presently rose and put on my jacket, and gave myself a mighty shake and felt right again, save for a slight ache in the back of my head. And this done, I stood looking at the little maiden, saying nothing, but wondering a good deal.
“And now,” quoth she, “take hold of my hand, else you will fall again going down the path.”
But I laughed and shook my head. “I am all right now,” said I, and glanced up at the stormcock’s nest, half minded to try it again. But my head was still running somewhat, and I made a vow to come back next day, so that if I fell once more there should be none to witness my defeat.
“What is your name?” said the little maid presently.
“William Dale; and my father’s name is William Dale, too, and we live at Dale’s Field,” said I. “What is yours?”
“Mine is Rose Lisle.”
“Lisle? There are no Lisles hereabouts,” said I. “Where do you come from?”
“From a long way off—near
