"Am I too near?" said I, "shall I sit behind?"
"No, indeed."
"What are you thinking of?"
"I am thinking that it is getting very hot."
His look sought the downs above. I said, I knew green nooks such as he would like. So we wound our way up the heights, and were soon in the open country. The scenery around Leigh was soft, woodland, pastoral, and no more. Yet Cornelius seemed to like those green slopes, fertile fields, and wide pastures; those shallow valleys, white homesteads, and fragrant orchards looking down from above, with now and then, in the open space between the dark outskirt of low woodland, and the golden green of sunlit scope opposite, a glimpse of azure hills melting soft and indistinct on the far horizon. But though he confessed it was very pretty, he found nothing to sketch.
"Let me take you to an old ruin further on," I said, zealously, "it is so picturesque!"
"How much further on, Daisy?"
"Only three or four miles."
"A mere trifle! but suppose we stay here?"
We stood in a hollow, sheltered by a few stunted trees.