"Don't be rude, Hen. You don't know Charles. And do drop your school slang—"
"Can't, my child. It's part of my holiday, so none of your pi-jaw! If you want me to enjoy myself you must let me have my head. You can't imagine how awfully good it tastes when you've been doing your best to choke girls off it for a year or two. It's one of the outward and visible signs of emancipation. This is another!" and she sprang up the high turf bank of the orchard of La Tour and danced a breakdown on it, and then jumped back into the road with ballooning skirts, to the intense amazement of old Mrs. Hamon of Le Fort, who had just come round the corner to draw sweet water from the La Tour well.
"People will think you're crazy," remonstrated Margaret.
"So I am, and you're my keeper, though it's supposed to be the other way about. The air of Sark has got into my head. What a quaint bonnet that old lady has! I wonder what colour it was in its infancy. Good-morning, ma'am! Isn't this a glorious day?" And old Madame Hamon murmured a word and passed hastily on lest worse should befall.
"Hennie, be sensible for a minute or two. I want you to consider something seriously."
"Sensible, if you like, Chummie, for 'tis my nature to. Serious?—Never! How could one, with those larks bursting themselves in a sky like that? And did you ever see hedges like these in all your life? What's it all about?—Ripply-Hair?"
"Yes. Don't you see how awkward the whole matter is—"
"Awkward for Charles Pixley maybe. I don't see that anybody else need worry themselves thin about it."
"I'm not thinking of Mr. Pixley. It's—"
"Ripply-Hair? Well, that's all right! Jolly sight nicer to think about him. I like his eyes too. There's something in them that seems to invite one's confidence. Perhaps you haven't noticed it? If I had a father-confessor—which, thank's-be, I haven't, and a jolly good thing for him!—I should stipulate for him having eyes just like that. Ripply hair too, I think. Yes. I should insist on his having hair just like Mr. Graeme's."