She lifted her stung fingers, where the prickle had faded, and looked at them.
Still—still she was “sparrow-blasted” as Andrew’s queer figure put it, blighted to the core by a trifle—kicked by a paltry sparrow, as it were.
And she had not been able to come back with even one little kick of spirit—not even so far as to venture to the safe skirts of the wood again—to the spring not fifty yards away—in the face of another’s need.
Her head drooped shamefacedly, her dark head.
There was a sudden rush of figures running, wildly running across the garden, where a patch of grass and a tree top were now ablaze: her father’s, half clad, old Sods’, others—a girl with blue dilated eyes.
“Pemrose!” She stretched out her arms, in a fair flutter as Andrew saw, then drooped over and fainted, a lily-heart, beside her flower clock.
CHAPTER IV
Fathers
“But I did hear it—father.”
“You dreamed it, girlie—up so early.”
Dwight Grosvenor, father of Una, drew his hand across his forehead; curiously enough, the rim of that high forehead looked damp—clammy as the woods at daybreak.