It was a good long distance from his height to Lilac, and she seemed wonderfully small and slender and delicately coloured as she stood there in her straight black frock and long pinafore. She had taken off her sun bonnet, so that her little white face with all the hair fastened back from it was plainly to be seen. It struck Peter as strange that such a small creature should talk of taking any more work “in hand” besides what she had to do already.
“You hadn’t ought to do hard work,” he said at length; “you haven’t got the strength.”
“I don’t mind the work,” said Lilac, drawing up her little figure. “I’m stronger nor what I look. ’Taint the work as I mind—” She stopped, and her eyes filled suddenly with tears.
Peter saw them with the greatest alarm. Somehow with his usual stupidity he had made his cousin cry. All he could do now was to take himself away as quickly as possible. He went up to Sober and touched him gently with his foot.
“Come along, old chap,” he said. “We’ve got to look after the lambs yonder.”
Without another word or a glance at Lilac he rolled away through the orchard with the dog at his heels, his great shoulders plunging along through the trees, and Lilac’s gay bunch of flowers swinging in one hand. He had quite forgotten to give it to her.
She looked after him in surprise, with the tears still in her eyes. Then a smile came.
“He’s a funny one surely,” she said to herself. “Why ever did he make off like that?”
There was no one to answer except Tib, who had jumped up into a tree and looked down at her with the most complete indifference.
“Anyway, he means to be kind,” concluded Lilac, “and it’s a shame to flout him as they do, so it is.”