"I don't fancy it," she says, beginning to walk on; "it looks earwiggy."
"Only the other day you said it was quite a lovers' seat!" he exclaims, in surprise.
"Exactly; and for that very reason I prefer waiting till I am more qualified to sit upon it."
By-and-by Miss Craven finds a position that suits her better; one nearer the edge of the wood, in full view of the Naullan road, along which market women, coal carts, stray limping tramps, go passing, and where loverly blandishments are out of the question.
The sun slides down between two birch stems that stand amid rock fragments, and riots at his will about her head, as she sits at the birch foot on a great grey stone, all flourished over with green mosses and little clinging plants. Below, the baby river runs tinkling; it is such a baby river that it has not strength to grapple with the boulders that lie in its bed; it comes stealing round their hoary sides with a coaxing noise, in gentlest swirls and bubbled eddies. The squirrels brought their nuts last autumn to Esther's stone to crack; the shells are lying there still; she is picking them up and dropping them again in idle play. Little dancing lights are flashing down through the birch's feathery-green locks, and playing Hide and Seek over Esther's gown and Robert's recumbent figure, as he lies in the repose of warmth, absolute idleness, absolute content at her feet. An hour and a half, two hours to be spent in trying to like Robert! Faugh! She yawns.
"That is the seventh time you have yawned since we have been here," remarks her lover, a little reproachfully.
"I dare say; and if you wait five minutes longer, you will probably be able to tell me that it is the seventy-seventh time."
"You did not yawn while we were indoors."
"I had my work; what is a woman without her work? A dismounted dragoon—a pump without water!" She stretches out her arms lazily, to embrace the dry, warm air. "Does every one find being courted as tedious a process as I do?" (Aside.) Aloud: "Some one said to me the other day, that no woman could be happy who was not fond of work. It is putting one's felicity on rather a low level, but I believe it is true."
"In the same way as no man can be good-tempered who is not fond of smoking," says Bob, starting a rival masculine proposition.