"Here comes your father," he said gravely.
Daphne turned. Her father was riding slowly through the bars. A wagon-bed loaded with rails crept slowly after him.
In an instant the things that had cost her so much toil and so many tears to arrange,--her explanations, her justifications, and her parting,--all the reserve and the coldness that she had laid up in her heart, as one fills high a little ice-house with fear of far-off summer heat,--all were quite gone, melted away. And everything that he had planned to tell her was forgotten also at the sight of that stern figure on horseback bearing unconsciously down upon them.
"If I had only kept my mouth shut about his old fences," he said to himself. "Confound my bull!" and he looked anxiously at Daphne, who sat with her eyes riveted on her father. The next moment she had turned, and they were laughing in each other's faces.
"What shall I do?" she cried, leaning over and burying her face in her hands, and lifting it again, scarlet with excitement.
"Don't do anything," he said calmly.
"But Hilary, if he sees us, we are lost."
"If he sees us, we are found."
"But he mustn't see me here!" she cried, with something like real terror. "I believe I'll lie down in the grass. Maybe he'll think I am a friend of yours."
"My friends all sit up in the grass," said Hilary.