“But—but I say,” began the budding artist again, as girlish feet pursued the trail, “where’s the use of our all plodding on to the farmhouse? Can’t ‘Jack’—Una—and I wait here—and you pick us up on the way back?”
“Yes! Oh! this wood.” Una the ultra-feminine “Jack”, sniffed greedily. “This wood! It smells just like glorified strawberry jam; the wild strawberries are late here.”
“And there’s the most delectable little brook that ever you saw over there,” pleaded Naomi. “The shadows, reflections, in it: blue-greens of pines, greeny-greens of rocks, gray-green of the water, itself. And—and the light that never was on land or sea, this hour of the morning!” The cooing whisper was the very voice of the green-gold radiance, itself. “Una could hunt—wild—flowers—”
Was it—was it the light that didn’t seem to belong on land or sea, the light that seemed adrift as it flashed from under a riders hat, just a minute or two before, that stiffened Pemrose’s tart answer then.
“No-o, you don’t!” She decided quickly. “I’m leader of this expedition—and we stick together. Forward march—and no straggling! Good-bye, Dandering Kate!”
As girlish hands waved farewell to the spiky pincushions, the wood-road abruptly gave out in a field, which, in turn, yielded to a potato patch that led up to the farmhouse door.
Milk cans clashing together like cymbals, brought the farmer’s wife, sunbonneted, from a meadow where she had been helping with the first crop of hay.
“Yes, my sakes! you can get all the milk you want,” she cried, “but my son ain’t through milking yet, though it’s on for eight o’clock. He’s as awk’ard as a one-armed paper hanger this morning,” in a lowered tone, “you see his right arm has been pretty bad ever since the war. It was broken by a machine-gun bullet; sometimes he can use it—sometimes it worries him, ain’t no good, at all. You can go round to the barn yerselves.”
They did, with hearts beating slowly, like muffled drums, as they pictured that one-armed milker.
But suddenly feet moved to a quick step again, a merry quick step—though stealthy—as they caught the whistle and then the chant—“swanky” challenge—that came through the barn-door.