“I am, am I, mistress?”
“If I were you, Philip, I should hire myself out for a scarecrow, and then having nothing under your clothes wouldn't so much matter.”
“It wouldn't, wouldn't it?” said Philip.
She was shying off at a half circle; he was beating round her.
“But you're nearly as old as Methuselah already, and what you'll be when you're a man——”
“Lookout!”
She made him an arch curtsey and leapt round a tree, and cried from the other side, “I know. A squeaking old croaker, with the usual old song, 'Deed yes, friends, this world is a vale of sin and misery.' The men's the misery and the women's the sin——”
“You rogue, you!” cried Philip.
He made after her, and she fled, still speaking, “What do you think a girl wants with a——Oh! Oh! Oo!”
Her tirade ended suddenly. She had plunged into a bed of the prickly gorse, and was feeling in twenty places at once what it was to wear low shoes and thin stockings.