Blanche slipped a firm, cool hand into hers.  “Don’t worry, Vassie,” she said in a low voice; “I foresee great things for you.  You’re a wonderful girl, my dear.  Now, I suppose we ought to be helping those two poor, dear men again.”  She rose to her feet with one of the lithe movements that always seemed rather surprising in a girl of her firmly-knit build, which would have been heavy had it not been for its grace.  Vassie, with a fulness that was so much more supple to a casual glance, yet followed her less beautifully.

“Still, a lot can be done with her,” thought Blanche, watching.  She motioned to her to come and help her with a row that had not yet been gathered into a bundle, and Vassie stooped over it with her.

“Why, what’s that?” exclaimed Blanche, catching sight of something grey that went rustling swiftly downwards between the straws.  She thrust her hand down, thinking it was a field-mouse, and caught the thing.  A speckled toad wriggled in her fingers, lustily enough, but it was a toad that had seen tragedy.  The keen edge of a scythe must have caught it, for one side of its head was shorn away; the eye had just been missed, but the inside of the poor little animal’s mouth and throat lay exposed, pulsating and brilliantly red—­a purer hue of blood was never seen than in that grey creature.

Blanche cried out in pity, while Vassie calmly advised death, seconded by Phoebe, and Judith looked away, sorry and sick, Blanche called to Ishmael, using his Christian name for the first time publicly, and aware of it herself and of its effect on Vassie through all her real pity.  Ishmael came running, and, taking the little beast tenderly, offered to knock it on the head with a stone before it knew what was happening; but Blanche forbade him.  She took it back, her fingers slipping in between it and his palm, and stood bending over it.

“Poor little thing!” she said; “at least it’s not bleeding now, and I believe it may live.  It doesn’t seem to be suffering, so let’s give it its chance.  Put it over the wall onto the grass, Ishmael.”

He vaulted over and, taking the toad from her, laid it down on the dewy grass.  It sat trembling for a few moments, and then began to hop away and was lost in the tall blades that met above its mutilated head—­one of the many tragedies of harvest.

Dusk had fallen while the toad’s fate hung in the balance; a pastel dusk that, even as the girls still stood watching, was made tremulous by the first faint breath of the moon.  From the sea came the red glare of the Wolf and the cold pure beam of the Bishop; in the north Charles’ Wain gave the first twinkle of its lights; while from the roads came the creak of the terrestrial waggons beginning to lumber slowly home.  It was time for supper, for lamps, for that meeting within walls which enforces a sudden intimacy after a day spent in the open, for beginning real life, as it would have to be lived, once more.  The three men stayed behind to gather the remnants of the picnic, but the girls lifted their pale skirts about them and were gone over the high stone stile like moths.