“Is he coming this way?” asked Daphne, after an interval of impatient waiting.

“Straight ahead.  Are you hid?”

“I can’t see whether I’m hid or not.  Where is he now?”

“Right on us.”

“Does he see you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he sees me?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Then I might as well get up,” said Daphne, with the courage of despair, and up she got.  Her father was riding along the path in front of them, but not looking.  She was down again like a partridge.

“How could you fool me, Hilary?  Suppose he had been looking!”

“I wonder what he thinks I’m doing, sitting over here in the grass like a stump,” said Hilary.  “If he takes me for one, he must think I’ve got an awful lot of roots.”

“Tell me when it’s time to get up.”

“I will.”

He turned softly toward her.  She was lying on her side, with her burning cheek in one hand.  The other hand rested high on the curve of her hip.  Her braids had fallen forward, and lay in a heavy loop about her lovely shoulders.  Her eyes were closed, her scarlet lips parted in a smile.  The edges of her snow-white petticoats showed beneath her blue dress, and beyond these one of her feet and ankles.  Nothing more fragrant with innocence ever lay on the grass.

“Is it time to get up now?”

“Not yet,” and he sat bending over her.

“Now?”

“Not yet,” he repeated more softly.

“Now, then?”

“Not for a long time.”

His voice thrilled her, and she glanced up at him.  His laughing eyes were glowing down upon her under his heavy mat of hair.  She sat up and looked toward the wagon crawling away in the distance; her father was no longer in sight.

One of the ewes, dissatisfied with a back view, stamped her forefoot impatiently, and ran round in front, and out into the sun.  Her lambs followed, and the three, ranging themselves abreast, stared at Daphne, with a look of helpless inquiry.

“Sh-pp-pp!” she cried, throwing up her hands at them, irritated.  “Go away!”

They turned and ran; the others followed; and the whole number, falling into line, took a path meekly homeward.  They left a greater sense of privacy under the tree.  Several yards off was a small stock-pond.  Around the edge of this the water stood hot and green in the tracks of the cattle and the sheep, and about these pools the yellow butterflies were thick, alighting daintily on the promontories of the mud, or rising two by two through the dazzling atmosphere in columns of enamored flight.

Daphne leaned over to the blue grass where it swayed unbroken in the breeze, and drew out of their sockets several stalks of it, bearing on their tops the purplish seed-vessels.  With them she began to braid a ring about one of her fingers in the old simple fashion of the country.