“This is Miss Martin’s seat,” said the giantess, stopping in front of a curiously-shaped and comfortless-looking stone block, “ye can sit in it if ye like.”
We did so, gently.
“How very nice,” said my cousin, getting up again, and removing an earwig and some dead leaves of last year from her skirt, “but I should have thought she would have liked more of a view. Those laurels two yards off are very pretty of course, but one can’t see anything else.”
I saw an antagonistic gleam in the giantess’s eye and hastened to suggest that the laurels might have grown up since the days of Mary Martin.
“Whether or no, it’s in it she used to sit,” she said, as if that settled the question of the view. “Maybe ye’d like now to walk a piece in the woods to see them?”
“I suppose it would take us a long time to walk through such large woods as these?” I said lusciously, seeing that I was regarded with more favour than my cousin.
“Is it walk thim woods? Ye’d sleep, before ye’d have them walked. But there’s a nice road round to the boathouse ye can go.”
“Perhaps you could tell me how many acres there are in this estate?” said my cousin, trying to make hay in my private streak of sunshine.
“I declare I’m not rightly sure.”
“I suppose they’re past counting?” continued my cousin, with the fascinating smile of one who is sustaining a conversation brilliantly.