The whole world was filled with the moonlight, warm tinted, and ghostly as the light of vanished days, white moths were flitting above the bushes, and on the almost windless air the voice of an owl came across the cotton fields.
Phyl reached the seat where they had all sat that afternoon. It was still warm from the all-day sunshine, and she sat down to rest and listen.
The owl had ceased crying, and through the league wide silence faint sounds far and near told of the life moving and thrilling beneath the night; the boom of a beetle, voices from the distant road, and now and then a whisper of wind rising and dying out across the garden and the trees.
A faint sound came from behind the seat, and before Phyl could turn two warm hands covered her eyes.
She plucked them away and stood up.
“I wish you wouldn’t do things like that,” she cried. “How dare you?”
“I couldn’t help it,” replied the other, “you looked so comfortable. I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you must have heard me coming across the grass.”
“I didn’t—and you shouldn’t have done it.”
“Well, I’m sorry. There, I’ve apologised, make friends.”
“There is nothing to make friends about,” she replied stiffly. “No, I don’t want to shake hands—I’m not angry, let us go into the house.”