"You sit down, Jerry," she said soberly. "I'm going to the spring to get you a cup of water, and then we'll have our luncheon."
When she returned, bearing the full cup delicately, he lay like a disconsolate boy, face down upon the ground; so she touched him on the shoulder and said, in a tone of the brisk housewife:—
Then Jerry sat up, and ate when she put food into his hand and drank from the cup she gave him. Marietta ate only a crumb here and there from her one bit of bread, for, seeing how hungry he was, she suspected that, in his poet's rapture, he had had no breakfast. She tried to rouse him to the things he loved.
"Only look through there," she said, pointing to a vista where a group of birches were shimmering in green. "I don't know 's I ever see a fountain such as they tell about, but this time in the year, before the leaves have fairly come, seems if the green was like a fountain springing up and never falling back. Maybe, though, it's the word I like, the sound of it. I don't know."
Jerry turned his eyes on her in a quick, keen glance.
"Marietta," he said, "you have real pretty thoughts."
"Do I?" asked Marietta, laughing, without consciousness. She was only glad to have beguiled him from the trouble of his mind. "Well, if I do, I guess you put 'em into my head in the first place." The feast was over, and she folded the napkin and swept away the crumbs. "Want some more water?" she asked, pausing as she repacked the basket.
Jerry shook his head.
"Marietta," said he, "seems if it wa'n't a day since you and I used to be here picnicking."