"I don't care. The sunshine will be so much the more welcome."
He smiled at her approvingly.
"You are learning. That's the vagabond philosophy."
He was a true prophet. In an hour a brisk wind from the west had blown the storm away and burnished the sky like a new jewel. All things animate suddenly awoke and field and road were alive with people. The birds appeared from tree and bush and set joyously about getting their belated breakfasts. A miracle had happened, it seemed to Hermia. The blood in her veins surged deliciously, and all the world rejoiced with her. And yet—it was merely that the sun had come out.
They had mounted a high hill and stopped for breath at its summit. The country over which they were to travel was spread out for their inspection. Down there in the valley the river choosing its leisurely course northward to the Seine, and beyond it the harlequin checkerboard of vine and meadow, the sentinel poplars, and to the east-ward the blue hills that sheltered Ivry-la-Bataille. Tiny villages, each with its slender campanile, made incidental notes of life and color and here and there, afar, the tall chimneys of factories stained the sky. About them in the nearer fields were hay-wagons and workers, men and women, their shouts and songs floating up the hill refined and mellowed by the distances.
Hermia took the air into her lungs, and surveyed the landscape.
"All this," said Markham, "is yours and mine—you see, when you have nothing, everything belongs to you."
She laughed.
"You won't dare to put that philosophy to the test. There's a delicious odor of cooking food. If everything belongs to me, I'll trouble you for the contents of that coffee-pot."
"Not hungry already—!"