“Oh!” exclaimed Amorelle in new dismay. “I forgot. What will Louise say? This was her special box.”
“Well, I fancy there’ll be enough else for her to eat,” remarked the young man, smiling. “I saw several hampers of goodies being stowed away. She needn’t begrudge us this.”
“But these were some special things she had made for—” Amorelle suddenly stopped her thinking aloud and began to laugh. The young man looked into her eyes with merry understanding.
“You don’t mean to tell me they were made for Sackett?” he challenged merrily. “If they were, I shall take pleasure in eating them up. He has the young lady all to himself; he will not miss the food.”
“No,” laughed Amorelle. “Oh, I oughtn’t to tell you, but it is very funny. They were prepared especially for you. Louise put them in my charge, so they wouldn’t get mixed with the rest.”
“Good work! I’ll see that they are appreciated. I’m sure you’ve fulfilled your charge. Did she make them with her own fair hands?”
A flush passed over Amorelle’s honest face, and while she hesitated he read her true eyes.
“You made them! You can’t deny it! All the better. Then we shall not have to thank the lady. But don’t look so troubled, please. We’ll make her think she’s thanked. Trust me for that. Now come on. The next two hours are ours. Let’s enjoy them to the fullest. Here’s our stream. Take this path. I knew we should find it lurking here somewhere, waiting for us. Look ahead. Did you ever see a prettier group of beech trees in your life? And there are rocks around that bend. We’ll spread our table on that rock. Be careful there; that path is slippery. Let me take your hand.”
They stepped into a tiny beaten path that wound away between the beeches and down to the bank of the gurgling stream.
The sun reached down between lacy leaf awnings and pierced the water with sudden bright stars of light that danced into their eyes and shot back to the water. Little, narrow, dart-shaped leaves floated lazily into groups and sailed away to a braided center, where more little leaves had made a tiny island, like a small fleet of boats. A blue dragonfly flitted silently over a pool that had somehow been detained by a scattering of stones, and a large frog suddenly brought out a “thug” of greeting as they passed.
The little path was thickly fringed with lush, broad blades of grass and deep blue three-leaved waxen flowers. Farther on, where a tiny spring bubbled in, a tangle of watercress and forget-me-not spread across the way.
“We’ll have some cress for our lunch,” said Garrison, stooping to gather a handful and wash it in the spring. Then, laying it carefully on a large maple leaf, he gathered some sprays of forget-me-not and handed them to Amorelle.
Amorelle fastened the blossoms in the belt of her yellow dress and went joyously on up to the cool heights, where a large rock crowned with pines held out alluring promise and waved delicate branches of dark green against the lighter setting of the beeches and maples.
They sat down on the big rock and looked up, up through the hemlock branches, between the shifting light and shadow. Heaven seemed so high and wide and all the world full of gracious air to breathe. “Oh!” said Amorelle wonderingly. “I had forgotten how wonderful it was. I have not been in the woods since I left Glenellen four months ago.”
“Glenellen. That’s not any relation to Ellen’s Isle, is it? You didn’t come from Scotland, did you?”
Amorelle’s eyes lit up with instant understanding.
“No.” She shook her head, smiling. “But I’d love to go there sometime.”
“Well, I hope you can. It certainly is a wonderful place.”
“You’ve been there? Oh!”
“Yes. Three years ago. I have an old aunt living near there, and I went over and spent a summer with her while I was still in college. But where is your Glenellen? Tell me about it.”
So Amorelle told about her childhood in the quaint little town of Rivington where her father and mother had lived. The young man watched her vivid, changing face and felt that he had not been deceived in his first estimate of her character.
There is much in having a good listener when one tells a beloved tale. Garrison knew how to listen and how to make her forget herself. The present life dropped away from her as she talked—Louise and her uncle and aunt; even George and the ugly red-brick house were things of the far away. She was the little girl of Glenellen going to school in the old schoolhouse, taking long walks with her beloved father around the lake and into the glen that had given the spot its name. She described to her companion the tall rocks with their curtain of fern hung down over the dripping sides; the little, darting fishes in the clear water; the high look of the sky as one lay on the moss below and gazed up. She made him see it all and her longing to go back to the dear old days. He seemed to know the child she had been, before trouble and this shy isolation fell upon her. He felt as he listened that he had entered a sacred sanctuary of a soul which, once entering, one can never forget.
Then something—was it the memory of the city? Her uncle’s house? Louise? George?—brought Amorelle suddenly back to herself and the present. What was she doing? Monopolizing Louise’s special guest! And what would George think if he could see her? Her guilty heart gave a bound of astonishment. She was having a good time! Such a good time! Was it right to feel so happy sitting here just talking with a stranger, when George was back in the office working hard?
Chapter 14
But the stranger gave her no time to think disturbing thoughts. Perhaps he saw the shade gathering in her eyes. Some fine intuition taught him that she had a background of unpleasantness somewhere, and his first impulse was to make her forget it, to bring back the happy look that made her eyes so beautiful.
“Look up there!” he said suddenly. “No—farther on—on the branch of that old chestnut. Don’t you see a splash of scarlet? Yes, now you’ve got him. That’s a scarlet tanager. Isn’t he a gem? Just see the gleam of the sun on his back. He’s a shy fellow. You couldn’t often get such a good look at one.”
They were off again on birds, just reveling in all they knew about them; and Amorelle forgot again who and what she was, till suddenly her companion reached a bold hand for the box.
“I’m hungry as ten bears,” he said, “and it’s twelve o’clock. Whoever heard of waiting longer than that for lunch on a picnic? Are you going to open that box, or shall I?”
“Oh!” said Amorelle, a small cloud of anxiety growing in her eyes again. “I suppose—we—must.”
“We certainly must,” said the young man cheerfully. “I’ll take all the responsibility. Just wait and see how admirably I put all the blame over on Miss Louise when we find her and make her eat humble pie all the afternoon. Don’t worry! This is our day. We are going to have a good time. Oh boy! Isn’t this some box?”
He lifted the coverings of wax paper and disclosed dainty sandwiches and many little cakes, all wrapped separately, with two glass containers of potato salad, a glimpse of salted almonds, olives, and some choice bits of celery in between. It was a perfect little lunch for two, prepared with an eye to effect, and as he surveyed it with satisfaction, Garrison could not keep a twinkle of amusement out of his eyes. He looked up to the troubled, comprehending eyes of the girl, and they burst into merry laughter, which lasted several minutes and would have seemed to a mere observer out of all proportion to the cause.
“No, but really,” said Amorelle, suddenly sobering down, “this is going to be a terrible blow to Louise not to be present when that box is opened. She won’t like it at all for me to be the one to eat it with you.”
“Well, I do,” said Russell Garrison frankly, “and as she is the one who arranged it that way there’s nothing for us to do but fall in line, is there? Here, have a napkin, and don’t look so sober. Isn’t this our picnic? We’re stranded on a desert island. You know it wasn’t our fault they didn’t have room for us.”
“They had room for you,” said Amorelle with a troubled look in her eyes.
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“But not for you?” he questioned, eyeing her keenly.
“Oh, they really thought I was coming with the others, but they have changed their minds and gone to New York instead.”
“And were you starting to walk home?” He watched her changing, lovely face.
“I don’t know what I was going to do.” She gave a little nervous laugh. “I certainly was glad you came, though I thought at first you were one of those awful men coming after me. But I’m so sorry you felt you had to stay for me. I’d have gotten home somehow.”
“I’m not sorry,” he said with a pleasant grin. “I picked you out right off as the nicest one of the bunch. I hope you don’t mind me. Here, have a sandwich and forget everybody else for a little while. You look to me like the kind of girl who is always thinking of what other people want and never has time to get what she wants herself. Aren’t these wonderful sandwiches? Say, I’m glad I came.”
Amorelle felt that the first bite of forbidden food would stick in her throat, but her companion was so merry, and beguiled her into the joy of the day so fully, that she ate and forgot that she was only the little Cinderella cousin who ought at that minute to be burning her fingers and broiling the chops for the picnickers on Giant Rocks, instead of sitting on a rock of her own under a hemlock canopy, eating the food prepared for the favored few.
And George! In the office with his hired secretary! Taking her out to lunch, perhaps! Making a date to take her riding when he should try his new car for the first time? Ah! George was utterly forgotten for the moment while she sat and enjoyed the day and held sweet conversation with one who had read all the books she loved, had seen the great places she had longed to visit, who seemed to think her very thoughts sometimes, even before she dared to speak, and understood just what she meant.
When they had eaten as many of the chicken sandwiches and little cakes as they could swallow, they went down to the brook to wash their hands. He caught her hand and helped her down the slippery, piney way till her feet were firm on the mossy, vine-broidered bank. They sat there awhile and watched the water bugs racing back and forth in the netted sunbeams and listened to the song of a meadowlark high above. There were yellow, starry flowers across the stream and tall cattails blowing reedy in the wind. The humming of a bee came drowsily across the music of the wind in the hemlock boughs that dipped in the water, and over the fields the sound of the whetting of the scythe rang cheerily as the day droned on.
“It seems just like a bit of heaven here,” said Amorelle dreamily. “A world without sin or wrong or sorrow in it.”
“Doesn’t it!” said Garrison eagerly. “I was just reading about that this morning.”
He put his hand in his pocket and drew out a thin little Testament and fluttered the leaves over accustomedly.
Amorelle’s face lit up.
“Oh,” she said eagerly, “I have mine with me, too.” She opened her handbag and took out a very small pocket Testament.
He glanced at her with delight.
“So you’re that kind of a girl,” he said eagerly. “I knew there was something about you different from all the rest that made me pick you out as the only one worthwhile, but I didn’t hope it would be as good as this. You know the Lord Jesus then, I’m sure, and you love the Book?”
“Oh yes!” Amorelle drew a deep breath of pleasure. Here then was one with whom she might have fellowship for a little while. “I don’t know what I should do without it,” she added wistfully. “Everything, everyone else seems so disappointing.”
“Isn’t that the truth!” said the young man fervently, watching the shadows and lights play across her speaking face. “Everyone except the Lord Jesus Christ. He is not a disappointment.”
Seeing the answering light in Amorelle’s eyes, he went on. “Do you know, I’ve discovered a new verse in the Bible. Of course it was there all the time”—he laughed—“but the fullness of its meaning is new to me.”
Garrison turned the leaves of his little book. “Here it is, Colossians 2:10. ‘And ye are complete in Him.’ I looked up that word complete and it means ‘fully equipped.’ I was astounded at the truth that opens up. For instance, take a house, a home. When it is fully equipped that means that it has everything that a home could possibly need. Beside a mere four walls and a roof, it has rooms for every purpose, heat for cold weather, air-conditioning for hot weather, up-to-date furniture for every use—”
Amorelle, large-eyed, was listening intently. She almost exclaimed as he went on. She was thinking of the brick house with the iron sink that could not by any stretch of the imagination be called fully equipped. It almost seemed as if he must somehow have known about it. Her alert mind, even as she listened, was comparing its old-fashioned, musty atmosphere to Christians who try to live on last year’s experience of Christ, or last Sunday’s Bible reading. She suddenly saw how unnecessary and inefficient it is to live a stunted, dreary life when there is plenty for every need in Christ. Just as there was plenty in George’s bank account to get her everything to make a pleasant home.
All at once she realized that the young man had ceased talking and was looking at her, and she came to herself with a start.
“You’re not listening,” he accused her playfully. “Am I boring you, or are you worried about something?”
Her face grew crimson with embarrassment over her seeming rudeness.
“Oh, I was listening,” she protested, “and of course you’re not boring me. I’m intensely interested. I was thinking—about what you were saying—”
She looked down, embarrassed again. How could she explain to this earnest young man without telling him all about George and the iron sink?
“I really was thinking—about what you were saying,” she pleaded. “It was wonderful. Please go on.”
“Well, I’d give a good many pennies to know what those thoughts were,” he said, smiling wistfully. She knew that he sensed that there was more in her heart than she told, and she was grateful that he respected her reserve and went on.
“But it was a wonderful thought to me, too,” he said. “I studied over it quite a while and found here and there in the Bible so many needs already supplied in Christ. There is our need of salvation first of all, and there it is in Colossians 1:14: ‘In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.’ Then we need to be delivered from the power of sin in our lives after we are saved. That is in the thirteenth verse, ‘Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness.’That’s the same thought as in Romans 8:2, you know. ‘For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.’ ”
Their heads were close together now, hunting out the verses.
“How wonderfully clear you make it all,” said Amorelle. “I never thought of it this way before.”
“Then we need to get near to God,” he went on, “instead of worshipping Him far off somewhere on a throne. That is already accomplished for us, too. Ephesians 2:13. ‘But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.’ I suppose you are familiar with the same thought in the tenth chapter of Hebrews.”
He looked up and found her nodding eagerly as she began to quote the words reverently.
“ ‘Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus….’ ”
A look of utmost delight came into Garrison’s face as he recognized how truly they spoke the same language.
“Please go on,” she urged, her face aglow with eagerness. He turned back again to Colossians.
“Here is wisdom and knowledge for us,” he said, “and it’s like every other need; it’s all ‘in Him.’ ”
“Why!” said Amorelle, her eager eyes starry. “I’ve needed wisdom and knowledge so badly, and I didn’t know where to find it. How blind I have been! Why, these things are just like the equipment of an up-to-date house, aren’t they? It’s all there if you only know where to find it. Now I have the key—‘in Chri
st.’ I’ll never mourn for lack of anything again. Oh, why is it we don’t believe more what God says? I’ve heard people say so often that they don’t believe in prayer because they have asked God for something and He didn’t send it.”
“Well, don’t you think that we sometimes confuse our needs with our wants? God has never said He would give us all our selfish, foolish desires. They might be as dangerous to us as a motorcycle would be to a five-year-old. But better than that, He said He would supply all our needs. It’s wonderfully true, though, that He throws in extra surprises now and then.”
There was deep meaning in the glance that Amorelle caught in his eyes just then, and she found herself blushing intensely. Now why did she have to do such a childish thing as that? What would he think of her? What would he think she thought he meant? Of course he meant nothing at all more than what he actually was saying. How could he know what a beautiful surprise God had sent to her in this wonderful day and this delightful conversation about her Lord?
Embarrassed over her own shyness, she blushed again till her cheeks were a gorgeous scarlet. What on earth was happening to her? she wondered excitedly. She must get control of herself.
“Oh,” she gasped, trying to explain herself to him, “you can’t possibly know what this day has been to me. I was in deep perplexity and trouble, and you’ve given me a key to solve all my problems. I cannot thank you enough. I needed just this to show me my way.”
“Thank the Lord for that,” said Garrison. “That’s very precious to know. I’m so glad you told me.”
Then suddenly the horn of a motor car wafted faintly, distantly, through the woods like the hint of a forgotten dream, and Garrison sat up with a start and looked at his watch.
“Great Scott!” he said disappointedly. “What do you think of that? It’s five minutes of two. We’d better be hustling if we want to connect with the other half of this picnic. You’re sure we must?”