III
"I've been thinking a good deal about it, and I really don't see any reason why we should wait,"—said Graeme, looking at Margaret.
And Miss Penny said "Hear! Hear!" so energetically that Margaret laughed merrily.
"We are both of one mind in the matter, an life is all too short at its longest, and most especially when it offers you all its very best with both hands—"
"Hear! Hear!" said Miss Penny.
"And time is fleeting," concluded the orator.
"And that kettle is boiling over again," and Miss Penny jumped up and ran to the rescue.
They were spending a long day in Grande Grève—the spot that had special claims upon their liking since their landing there after that memorable trip to Brecqhou. They had brought a full day's rations, prepared with solicitous discrimination by Graeme himself, and a kettle, and a great round tin can of fresh water from the well at Dixcart, and a smaller one of milk.
So high were their spirits that they had even scoffed at Johnnie Vautrin's intimation that he had seen a magpie that morning, and it had flown over their house. But magpie or no magpie they were bent on enjoyment, and they left Johnnie and Marielihou muttering black spells into the hawthorn hedge, and went off with the dogs down the scented lanes, through the valley where the blue-bells draped the hillsides in such masses that they walked as it were between a blue heaven and a blue earth, and so by the meadow-paths to the Coupée.
Their descent of the rough path down the side of the Coupée with all this impedimenta had not been without incident, but eventually every thing and person had been got to the bottom in safety.