“Don’t it taste good out o’ door?”
Alice edged away from him and munched in silence, and presently tears of mortification welled into her eyes. Adam, returning on tiptoe from a cautious expedition to inspect a nuthatch’s nest in the bole of a tree, suddenly took note of her woeful expression, and paused aghast.
“What be cryin’ for, maidie?” he asked in so kind a tone, that the tears rolled down upon her cheeks, and a little unexpected sob burst forth.
“I don’t know,” she murmured; then, petulantly: “I wish I hadn’t come!”
Adam’s face fell.
“Don’t ’ee like being here? I thought ye’d be so pleased.”
The sense of injury now overcame maidenly reserve.
“You do never say a word to I. You don’t so much as look at I. I mid be a stock or a stone,” she added passionately.
Adam surveyed her with dawning comprehension; during the silence that intervened the rustling of the leaves could be heard, the distant notes of a lark circling upwards from the downs beyond the woods, the chirp of nestlings, the irrepressible laughter of a gleeful squirrel. Perhaps all this cheerful bustle of the sunshiny spring awoke in the man’s breast certain hitherto dormant instincts. He, too, was young, and love and springtime go hand-in-hand. He stooped, laid a tentative forefinger gently under Alice’s round chin, tilted it slightly, and gazed down into the tearful eyes.
“Ye mustn’t cry, my maid,” said he, and then he kissed her.