“Hennie, be sensible for a minute or two.  I want you to consider something seriously.”

“Sensible, if you like, Chummie, for ’tis my nature to.  Serious?—­Never!  How could one, with those larks bursting themselves in a sky like that?  And did you ever see hedges like these in all your life?  What’s it all about?—­Ripply-Hair?”

“Yes.  Don’t you see how awkward the whole matter is—­”

“Awkward for Charles Pixley maybe.  I don’t see that anybody else need worry themselves thin about it.”

“I’m not thinking of Mr. Pixley.  It’s—­”

“Ripply-Hair?  Well, that’s all right!  Jolly sight nicer to think about him.  I like his eyes too.  There’s something in them that seems to invite one’s confidence.  Perhaps you haven’t noticed it?  If I had a father-confessor—­which, thank’s-be, I haven’t, and a jolly good thing for him!—­I should stipulate for him having eyes just like that.  Ripply hair too, I think.  Yes.  I should insist on his having hair just like Mr. Graeme’s.”

They had strolled along past Le Fort till the road lost itself in a field above Banquette, and there they came to an involuntary stand and stood gazing.

Before them, the long, broken slopes of the Eperquerie swept down from the heights to the sea, one vast blaze of flaming gorse—­a tumultuous torrent of solid sunshine stayed suddenly in its course.  And, in below the sunshine of the gorse, where rough Mother Earth should have been, there lay instead a soft sunset cloud, the tender cream-yellow and green of myriads of primroses and the just uncurling fronds of the bracken—­primroses in such unbroken sheets and masses as to give a weird effect of remoteness and impalpability to that which was solid and close at hand.

“Wonderful!” murmured Margaret.

“Glorious!” murmured Miss Penny.  “Is it really old Mother Earth we’re looking at?”

“No, dear!  It’s a bit of the sky fallen down there and the sun has rolled over it into the sea.  See the bits of him in the wavelets!  And did you ever in your life see a green like that water below the rocks?”

“Sky and sun above, sun and sky below!—­with trimmings of liquid emerald and sapphire, shot with white and gold.  Meg, my child, this is a long way from No. 1 Melgrave Square.”

“A long, long way!” assented Margaret thoughtfully.  And then, to take advantage of her companion’s comparative soberness through the stirring of her feelings,—­“Hennie, do you think we ought to stop?”

“Stop?” and Miss Penny fronted her squarely.  “Stop?  Why, we’ve only just come.  What’s disgruntling you, Chummie?”

“Can’t you see how awkward it is?”

“Well,—­that depends—­”

“No one would believe it was all pure accident.”

“Perhaps it isn’t,” said Miss Penny oracularly.

“Why, what do you mean?” said Margaret, bristling in her turn.

“Oh, I’m imputing no guile, my child.  I’m miles away up past that kind of thing.  What I mean is this—­perhaps it was meant to be, and you couldn’t help yourselves.  Now if that should be the case, it would be flying in the face of Providence to go and upset it all.  What are your feelings towards him?”