"Oh, Richard!" she said, carried away by her own delight. "Look at it! Isn't it the sweetest darling baby that ever was! Oh, you sweet!" she said, putting her lips to the little woolly head.
"You are!" Richard said quite without premeditation.
Harriet laughed, surrendered the little lamb to Trotter, and followed the old man's departure to the stables with an anxious warning.
"They're to have this little enclosure all to themselves," she explained to Richard, when they were alone. "He's going to build them a little shed." And as Richard, his back leaning against the low brick wall, made no immediate attempt to move, she looked at him expectantly. "Shall we go back?" she suggested.
"That sounded very pleasant to me," Richard said, with deliberate irrelevance.
Harriet looked at him in puzzled silence.
"I mean your calling me Richard," he said.
She flushed brightly, and laughed.
"Did I? I always think of you as Richard!" she explained.
"So you abandon me on the Brazil trip?" he asked, watching her seriously.