"Leave it," interrupted Mark. "I know all that, Cora. 'Tis just one of those puzzles that happen. 'Tis no good fretting about anybody else: what you've got to do is to make my father love you. And you've only got to be yourself and he must love you."
"Of course I'll do my best."
"Give me just one more lovely kiss, before we get over the hill-top and come in sight of them. We're to meet at the 'old men's' camp."
She kissed him and then silence fell between them. It lasted a long while until he broke it.
"Don't fancy because I'm so still that I'm not bursting with joy," he said. "But when I think of what's happened to me this minute, I feel 'tis too big for words. The thoughts in me can't be spoken, Cora. They are too large to cram into little pitiful speeches."
"I'm getting hungry; and there's Milly waving," she answered.
"Milly's hungry too, belike."
Eastward, under Pen Beacon, lay an ancient lodge of the neolithic people. The circles of scattered granite shone grey, set in foliage and fruit of the bilberry, with lichens on the stone and mosses woven into the grass about them. A semicircle of hills extended beyond and formed a mighty theatre where dawn and storm played their parts, where falling night was pictured largely and moonshine slept upon lonely heights and valleys. In the glen beneath spread Dendles Wood, with fringes of larch and pine hiding the River Yealm and spreading a verdant medley of deep summer green in the lap of the grey hills. Gold autumn furzes flashed along the waste, and the pink ling broke into her first tremble of colourless light that precedes the blush of fulness.
The party of four sat in a hut circle and spoke little while they ate and drank. Rupert, unknown to the rest, and much to his own inconvenience, had dragged up six stone bottles of ginger-beer hidden under his coat. These he produced and was much applauded. A spring broke at hand, and the bottles were sunk therein to cool them.
They talked together after a very practical and businesslike fashion. Milly and Rupert were definitely engaged in their own opinion, and now when Mark, who could not keep in the stupendous event of the moment, announced it, they congratulated the newly engaged couple with the wisdom and experience of those who had long entered that state.