"The young men… the young men… they might if they wo'ld." Ah, Miss Marty, was it only the edge of the morning that heightened the rose on your cheek by a little—a very little—as the sky paled? And now the kingfishers were awake, and the woodlands nigh, and the tide began to gather force as it neared the narrower winding channel. To enter this they skirted a mud-flat, where the day, breaking over the tree-tops and through the river mists, shone on scores upon scores of birds gathered to await it—curlews, sandpipers, gulls in rows like strings of jewels, here and there a heron standing sentry. The assembly paid no heed to the passing boat.
Miss Marty gazed up at the last star fading in the blue. How clear the morning was! How freshly scented beneath the shadow of the woods! Her gaze descended upon the incongruous top-hat and gold-laced livery of Scipio, touched with the morning sunshine. She glanced around her and motioned to Cai Tamblyn to bring the boat to shore by a grassy spit whence (as she knew) a cart-track led alongshore through the young oak coppices to the village.
"And Scipio," she said, turning as she stepped out on the turf, "will like a run in the woods."
She had walked on, maybe a hundred paces, before the absurdity of it struck her. She had been thinking of Mr. Pope's line:
"When wild in woods the noble savage ran."
"When wild in woods the noble savage ran."
And at the notion of Scipio, in gilt-laced hat and livery, tearing wildly through the undergrowth in the joy of liberty, she halted and laughed aloud.
She was smiling yet when, at a turning of the leafy lane, she came upon the prettiest innocent sight. On a cushion of moss beside the path, two small children—a boy and a girl—lay fast asleep. The boy's arm was flung around his sister's shoulders, and across his thighs rested a wand or thin pole topped with a May-garland of wild hyacinths, red-robin and painted birds' eggs. A tin cup, brought to collect pence for the garland, glittered in the cart-rut at their feet. It had rolled down the mossy bank as the girl's fingers relaxed in sleep.
They were two little ones of Troy, strayed hither from the merrymaking; and at first Miss Marty had a mind to wake them, seeing how near they lay to the river's brink. But noting that a fallen log safeguarded them from this peril, she fumbled for the pocket beneath her skirt, dropped a sixpence with as little noise as might be into the tin cup, and tiptoed upon her way.
About three hundred yards from the village she met another pair of children; and, soon after, a score or so in a cluster, who took toll of her in pence; for almost everyone carried a garland. And then the trees opened, and she saw before her the village with its cottages, grey and whitewashed, its gardens and orchards, mirrored in the brimming tide, all trembling in the morning light and yet exquisitely still. Far up the river, beyond the village and the bridge, a level green meadow ran out, narrowing the channel; and here beneath the apple-trees—for the meadow was half an orchard—had been set out many lines of white-covered tables, at which the Mayers made innocently merry.