"No, I never gave him up," said my mother quietly.
"I think he ought to have stopped with you all day to-day," said Carette. "I feel as if I were stealing him."
"Only borrowing," smiled my mother. "It is good to be young, and the young have their rights as well as the old. Good luck to you and a fine ride!" and I shook up Gray Robin, and we went on.
"Be very careful if you cross the Coupée, Phil," she called after us. "There was a fall there the other day, your grandfather was saying, and the path has not been mended yet."
I waved my hand, and we went on. From a distant field, where they were busy with their hay, my grandfather and Krok saw us passing along the road, and straightened up and shaded their eyes with their hands, and then waved us heaps of good luck, and we jogged on along the road to the Eperquerie.
CHAPTER XIV
HOW YOUNG TORODE TOOK THE DEVIL OUT OF BLACK BOY
It was a day of days—a perfect Midsummer Day. The sky was blue without a cloud, the blaze of the gorse was dimming, but the ferns and foxgloves swung in the breeze, the hedgerows laughed with wild roses and honeysuckle, and the air was full of life and sweetness and the songs of larks and the homely humming of bees. And here was I come back from the Florida swamps and all the perils of the seas, jogging quietly along on that moving nosegay Gray Robin, with the arms of the fairest maid in all Sercq round my waist, and the brim of her hat tickling my neck, and her face so close to my shoulder that it was hard work not to turn and kiss it.