“Well? What is it?” her friend’s voice answered. “It’s all right; we’ll soon have you up here!”
“I don’t want to go up there,” she shouted back. “I want you to come down. Please come down, Adrian! You’re spoiling all our afternoon.”
Once more there was dead silence. Then she called out again.
“Adrian,” she said, “there’s a moth being drowned in the ditch out here.”
“What? Where? What do you say?” came the man’s reply, accompanied by several violent movements. Presently a rope descended from the hole and swung suspended in the air.
“Look out, my dear,” Sorio’s voice ejaculated and a moment later he came swinging down, hand over hand, and landed at her side. “What’s that?” he gasped breathlessly, “what did you say? A moth in the water? Show me, show me!”
“Oh, it’s nothing, Adrian,” she answered petulantly. “I only wanted you to come down.”
But he had rushed out of the door and down to the stream’s edge.
“I see it! I see it!” he called back at her. “Here, give me my stick!” He came rushing back, pushed roughly past her, seized his stick from the ground and returned to the ditch. It was easy enough to effect the moth’s rescue. The same fluffy stickiness in the thing’s wet wings that made it helpless in the water, made it adhere to the stick’s point. He wiped it off upon the grass and pulled Philippa back into the building.