THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE



[Illustration: Our Stork]

On the outskirts of the ancient town of Ribe, on the Danish north
seacoast, a wooden bridge spanned the Nibs River when I was a boy--a
frail structure, with twin arches like the humps of a dromedary,
for boats to go under. Upon it my story begins. The bridge is long
since gone. The grass-grown lane that knew our romping feet leads
nowhere now. But in my memory it is all as it was that day nearly
forty years ago, and it is always summer there. The bees are droning
among the forget-me-nots that grow along shore, and the swans arch
their necks in the limpid stream. The clatter of the mill-wheel
down at the dam comes up with drowsy hum; the sweet smells of meadow
and field are in the air. On the bridge a boy and a girl have met.

He whistles a tune, boy-fashion, with worsted jacket slung across
his arm, on his way home from the carpenter shop to his midday
meal. When she has passed he stands looking after her, all the
music gone out of him. At the other end of the bridge she turns
with the feeling that he is looking, and, when she sees that he
is, goes on with a little toss of her pretty head. As she stands
one brief moment there with the roguish look, she is to stand
in his heart forever--a sweet girlish figure, in jacket of gray,
black-embroidered, with schoolbooks and pretty bronzed boots--

"With tassels!" says my wife, maliciously--she has been looking
over my shoulder. Well, with tassels! What then? Did I not worship