Frances worked gravely at her sketch, just as she had worked in the Bishop’s room at Burminster a fortnight before, too deeply absorbed to spare any attention for any interest outside that upon which she was engaged. It was her way to concentrate thus.
Suddenly through the summer silence there came a sound—the voice of a little child singing in the lane below—an unintelligible song, without tune, but strangely sweet, as the first soft song of a twittering bird in the dawning.
Frances lifted her head. She looked at Montague. “Did you leave your car in the lane?”
“I did,” he said, wondering a little at the sudden anxiety in her eyes.
“Ah!” She was on her feet with the word, her sketching almost flung aside. “She’ll run into it.”
“Absurd!” he protested. “Not if she has eyes to see!”
“Ah!” Frances said again. “She hasn’t!”
She was gone even while she spoke, springing for the gap through which he had forced his way a few minutes earlier, calling as she went in tones tender, musical, such as he had never believed her capable of uttering. “Mind, little darling! Mind! Wait till I come to you!”
She was gone from his sight. He heard her slipping down the bank into the mud of the lane. He heard the child’s voice lifted in wonder but not in fear.
“You are the pretty lady who came to see the cows. May I hold your hand?”