Short Fiction · Trooping with Crows (2/5) (2/2)

Lettice looks down on the gravel-path, unconquered still.

“Please let me go, Dr. Herron. Let it be till I return from London. I couldn’t tie you down with any promises, you know. I’m quite sure you will have altered your mind by the time I come back, and I’ll really take your letter up to town with me, and⁠—and⁠—and”⁠—here she hesitates and stumbles and picks herself up again, shakes her hair over her eyes, and compels the doctor to release her hand so that she may fasten it back again, and then looking a little sideways at him, completes her sentence⁠—“and take great, great care of it. Goodbye, Dr. Herron.” And she is gone.

And Dr. Herron, looking after her as she flutters across the sunlit lawn and disappears under the grey stone portico of the old house, wonders whether in any corner under heaven there ever existed, or could exist, so sweet and fascinating, and withal so wilful and untamed, a being as Lettice Tremarten.