"Perhaps," he confessed.
The girl laughed again; one would have sworn there was; oy in her voice. "You must have been much absorbed," she continued, "in the view!"
"It is very fine." He saw now more clearly the picture she made: the details of her dress, the slender figure, closely sheathed in a garb of blue lighter in shade than her eyes.
She put out her hand. "I am forgetting--you came down with my uncle, I suppose?" in a matter-of-fact tone. "A pleasure we hardly expected! Let me see. I haven't seen you since--ah, when was it?"
He told her. "Yes; I remember now. Wasn't that the day the Scotch bagpipes went by? You had business that called you away. Something very important, was it not? You were successful?"
"Quite."
"How oddly you say that!" She looked at him curiously. "But shall we walk on toward the house? I went down into the town thinking to meet my uncle," she explained, "but as I had a few errands, on account of a children's fête we are planning, reached the tavern after he had gone."
"He went to a farm not far distant."
As he spoke, she stepped into the path leading from the churchyard; it was narrow and she walked before him.
"Yes; so the landlord said," she remarked without looking around. And then, irrelevantly, "The others went hunting. Are you a Nimrod, Mr. Steele?"