“I found a hat,” said Oak.
“It is mine,” said she, and, from a sense of proportion, kept down to a small smile an inclination to laugh distinctly: “it flew away last night.”
“One o’clock this morning?”
“Well—it was.” She was surprised. “How did you know?” she said.
“I was here.”
“You are Farmer Oak, are you not?”
“That or thereabouts. I’m lately come to this place.”
“A large farm?” she inquired, casting her eyes round, and swinging back her hair, which was black in the shaded hollows of its mass; but it being now an hour past sunrise the rays touched its prominent curves with a colour of their own.
“No; not large. About a hundred.” (In speaking of farms the word “acres” is omitted by the natives, by analogy to such old expressions as “a stag of ten.”)
“I wanted my hat this morning,” she went on. “I had to ride to Tewnell Mill.”