Very still and cool here among the fern, the Fair a nest of tossing lights, faint cries and that lion's trump of oo-oo-oomph beneath them; a remote place of silence, and silence communicated itself to them until Ima broke it by her question "Of what are you thinking, Percival?" and to his reply—that he thought of when he should leave them all, and how—told him "Strange then how thoughts run. It was in my mind also."
Stranger how tricks and chances of life go! Looking back afterwards, recalling her words, Percival realised how events had run from one to another upon the most brittle thread of hazards. The trouble in the vans had sent him out here with Ima; that was the merest chance; that was the beginning of the thread.
Very cool and remote here among the bracken. He had gone back to silence after her last words. It was she who spoke again.
"Are you weary of it?" she asked.
He was lying at his full length, face downwards, his chin upon his clasped fingers. She sat upright beside him, one knee raised and her hands about it.
He turned his cheek to where his chin had been and looked up lazily at her: "Why, no, not weary of it, Ima. I like the life. I've been at it a long time. When the day comes I shall be sorry to go."
She was looking straight before her. "A sorry day for us, also," she said.
"Will you be sorry, Ima?"
"Of course I shall be sorry."
He gave a sound of mischievous laughter. Lying idly stretched out there, the warm night and the unusual sense of laziness he was enjoying stirred in him some prankish spirit, or some spirit of more warm desire, that he had never felt in Ima's company. "Yet you are always trying to get rid of me," he said; and he laughed again on that mischievous note, and snuggled his cheek closer against his hands, and felt that spirit run amicably through him as he stretched and then released his muscles.