Then breakfast was prepared as on the previous day, and Gillian's stale loaf was broken for the ducks. But Joscelyn pointed out that one of the kissing-crusts had been pulled off in the night.
"Your stories, Master Pippin, are doing their work," said she.
"I begin to think so," said Martin cheerfully. And then they fell to on their own white loaves and sweet apples.
When they had breakfasted Martin observed that he could make better and longer daisy-chains than any one else in the world, and his statement was pooh-poohed by six voices at once. For girls' fingers, said these voices, had been especially fashioned by nature for the making of daisy-chains. Martin challenged them to prove this, and they plucked lapfuls of the small white daisies with big yellow eyes, and threaded chains of great length, and hung them about each other's necks. And so deft and dainty was their touch that the chains never broke in the making or, what is still more delicate a matter, in the hanging. But Martin's chains always broke before he had joined the last daisy to the first, and the girls jeered at him for having no necklace to match their necklaces of pearls and gold, and for failing so contemptibly in his boast. And he appeared so abashed by their jeers that little Joan relented and made a longer chain than any that had been made yet, and hung it round his neck. At which he was merry again, and confessed himself beaten, and the girls became very gracious, being in their triumph even more pleased with him than with themselves. Which was a great deal. And by then it was dinner-time.
After dinner Martin proposed that as they had sat all the morning they should run all the afternoon, so they played Touchwood. And Martin was He. But an orchard is so full of wood that he had a hard job of it. And he observed that Jennifer had very little daring, and scarcely ever lifted her finger from the wood as she ran from one tree to another; and that Jane had no daring at all, and never even left her tree. And that Joscelyn was extremely daring when it was safe to be so; and that Jessica was daring enough to tweak him and run away, while Joyce was more daring still, for she tweaked him and did not run. As for little Joan, she puzzled him most of all; for half the time she outdid them all in daring, and then she was uncatchable, slipping through his very fingers like a ray of sunlight a child tries to hold; but the other half of the time she was timidity itself, and crept from tree to tree, and if he were near became like a little frightened rabbit, forgetting, or being through fear unable, to touch safety; and then she was snared more easily than any.
By supper, however, every maid had been He but Jane. For no man can catch what doesn't run.
"How the time has flown," said Joscelyn, when they were all seated about the middle tree after the meal.
"It makes such a difference," said Jennifer, "when there's something to do. We never used to have anything to do till Master Pippin came, and now life is all games and stories."
"The games," said Joscelyn, "are well enough."
"Shall we," said Martin, "forego the stories?"