'Only to keep the grass short, and then we try to imagine it's a lawn.'
Raking, I came a little nearer; and so I saw she had been, quite recently, crying.
I looked at her more attentively. She was pretty, with the prettiness of twenty; round and soft, fair and smooth. She had on an elaborately masculine shirt and high stiff collar and tie and pin and belt; and from under the edge of the hard straw hat tilted up at the back by masses of burnished coils of hair I saw a pulpy red mouth, the tip of an indeterminate nose, and two unhappy eyes, tired with crying.
'How early to begin,' I said.
'Begin what?'
'It's not nine yet. Do you always get your crying done by breakfast time?'
She flushed all over her face.
'Forgive me,' I said, industriously raking. 'I'm a rude person.'
The girl was silent for a few moments; considering, I suppose, whether she should turn her back on the impertinent stranger once and for all, or forgive the indiscretion and make friends.
Well, she made friends. She and I, alone up on the hill, the only creatures of anything like the same age, sure to see each other continually in the forests, on the road, over the fence, certainly we were bound either to a tiresome system of pretending to be unaware of each other's existence or to be friends. We are friends. It is the wisest thing to be at all times. In ten days we have become fast friends, and after the first six she left off crying.