"Betty," said Mark, "you've run away."
"Yes. Isn't it fun? Shan't I catch it from Lanky when I get back. I've lunch in this basket. Two big bits of Buszard's cake, some tartlets, sixpennorth of chocolate, four apples, and four bottles of ginger-pop. Catch hold!"
The girl was in wild spirits. It happened to be a day of late April when the sun, pouring its rays into the moist fresh earth, brings forth spring, the Aphrodite of woods and fields, with the foam of milk-white blossoms about her, and a cestus of tender green. As they passed out of the lane on to the soft turf of the downs, the landscape widened till it became panoramic. Behind lay King's Charteris encompassed by hanging woods now bursting into leaf; beyond were rolling downs, wide breezy pastures, sloping southerly and westerly to the sea, which gleamed, a thread of silver, through an opalescent haze.
"Isn't it heavenly?" Betty cried.
"It is r-r-rather jolly!"
"R-r-r-ra—ther jolly," she mimicked him to the life, rounding her shoulders and slouching forward in an attitude which Mark recognised, not without dismay, as his own; "ra—ther jolly, awfully jolly, beastly jolly. How Lanky would love to hear you."
"S-s-shut up, Betty!"
"What! You address a young lady in that manner! I must beg you"—she had caught the accent and intonation of the excellent Miriam—"to speak English. Young people, nowadays, are unintelligible. My father, in whose presence I never ventured to take a liberty with the English language, would not have believed it possible that a gentleman could use such expressions...."
Mark tried to pull her hair, but she ran like Atalanta, Mark following encumbered with the basket. Soon the business of the day began: the finding of the stonechats' nests. Presently they sat down in the shade.
"Let us have a 'beyondy' talk," said Betty.