"Well, now, have you come round to take a fling at me?" said the girl, with more of terror than anger in her voice. "If you have, I won't bear it, for you're the one most to blame, coming here again and again, without so much as speaking a word, though ye know well enough how hungry I am for the least bit of notice."
"This way. We are too near the house," said Storms, seizing the girl's arm, and drawing her toward the kitchen-garden, that lay in the rear of the building. "Let us get under the cherry-trees; they cannot see us there."
"I musn't be away long," answered the girl, subdued, in spite of herself. "The mistress will be looking for me."
"I know that; so we must look sharp. Come."
Judith hurried forward, and directly the two stood under the shadow of the cherry-trees sheltered by the closely-growing branches.
"What an impatient scold you are, Judith!" said the young man. "There is no being near you without a fear of trouble. What tempted you, now, to get into a storm with the mistress?"
"You did, and you know it. Coming in, without a look for one, and saying, as if we were a thousand miles apart, 'I say, lass, a pint, half-and-half mild, now.'"
Judith mimicked the young man's manner so viciously that he broke into a laugh, which relieved the apprehensions which had troubled her so much.
"And if I did, what then? Haven't I told you, more than once, that you and I must act as strangers toward each other?"
"But it's hard. What is the good of a sweetheart above the common, if one's friends are never to know it?"