The Enemy’s chin just reached comfortably to the top fence-rail, and there it rested, while above it peered a pair of round blue eyes. It is not usual for an enemy’s eyes to be so round and blue, nor an enemy’s chin to reach so short a distance from the ground.
“She’s watching me,” Margaret thought; “she wants to see if I’ve got far as she has. ’Fore I’d lean my chin on folks’s gates and watch ’em!”
“She knows I’m here,” reflected the Enemy, “just as well as anything. ’Fore I’d peek at people out o’ the ends o’ my eyes!”
’Fore I’d lean my chin on folks’s gates and watch ’em!
Between the two, a little higher than their heads, tilted a motherly bird on a syringa twig.
“Ter-wit, ter-wee,—pit-ee, pit-ee!” she twittered under her breath. And it did seem a pity to be quarrellers on a day in May, with the apple buds turning as pink as pink!
“I sha’n’t ever tell her any more secrets,” Margaret mused, rather sadly, for there was that beautiful new one aching to be told.
“I sha’n’t ever skip with her again,” the Enemy’s musings ran drearily, and the arm she had always put round Margaret when they skipped felt lonesome and—and empty. And there was that lovely new level place to skip in!
“Pit-ee! Pit-ee!” sang softly the motherly bird.