"Please," he taunted. "When you were the goose girl and I was the prince, you didn't say please."
Henrietta laughed. "And neither did the prince," she dared him.
"No decent lover would," said Bartlett, bending and kissing her full on her whimsical mouth.
After some little time they saw the others reappear over the top of the hill. Henrietta had returned to her seat on the fence and Bartlett was beside her, his arm around her waist, her head on his shoulder with a simplicity truly bucolic. So might the Parkers' shifty-eyed stable-boy be wooing the slatternly maid-servant in some secluded place behind the barn.
Henrietta straightened quickly and blushing crimson after the manner of the maid-servant, raised her hands to her hair so that one side of her coiffure might not appear unnecessarily flattened before the sharp eyes of the youthful Billy.
"Aren't we silly?" said she, glancing at Bartlett with the same expression with which the maid-servant would have glanced at the stable-boy.
"Why silly?" demanded Bartlett. "We love each other, don't we? Why shouldn't I put my arm around you?"
"Oh," said Henrietta, "you should, but—er—er we seem so old for such things."
"Old?" Bartlett laughed. "Love is the oldest thing in the world."
"I know," agreed Henrietta, "but not before people."