"But I don't like Achilles: he was only sullen because he had lost Briseis. Surely, Harry, you don't mind it that Georgy has gone on with Jack?"
Harry laughed loud and long: "That would be a good joke! As if I cared for Georgy Lenox! But it does make me angry to see Jack so taken up with her. Did you see her new shoes?"
There could be no question of that.
"Jack bought them for her," said Harry with angry emphasis. "He spends all his money on her, and I think it is a shame. She told him at first she could not come to-day, because she had nothing to wear on her feet except thin slippers. What does Jack do but post off to John Edwards and buy her a pair of boots at once!" He paused a moment, then burst out: "Just look at them!"
Georgy had flung her flowers at Jack, and having jumped across the little brook which meandered through the wood, now nodded at him defiantly, tossing her long curls, while her eyes sparkled and her color rose. He too sprang over the stream, with pretended anger, and she gave a little shriek and flew down the path, with him in pursuit. Jack was clumsy and not built for speed, while Georgy had the spring of a fawn; but I suspect she was willing to be caught, for when we next gained a glimpse of them she was sitting on a stump fanning herself with her broad-brimmed hat, which had fallen off, while he was leaning against a tree looking at her.
"He has kissed her—I know he has," Harry whispered to me with a bitter look. "I would die before I would kiss her when she behaved like that!"
I was in a sort of tremor. I was too young to be in love in the ordinary sense of the phrase, but I was aghast at the thought of the bloom of her cheeks and lips being plucked like roses in a hedgerow. She was precious to my imagination, yet, for all her every-day reality, scarcely nearer to my aspirations than Lady Edith Plantagenet or Ellen, Lady of the Lake.
"I don't care," muttered Harry doggedly—"I don't care. I dare say he means to marry her when he grows up, but I don't care."
"Floyd," called out Georgy, "can't you show me another bird's nest?"
Now I knew at least a hundred birds' nests in these woods. All Wednesday afternoon I had nestled here in the thickets and watched the little builders hopping from moss to bough and twig, and had learned all their secrets. I knew that by the great rock just behind where she was sitting was a ledge with shelving sides overhung with moss, and that there, so cunningly wrought and hidden that none but a trained eye could ever have discovered it, was an exquisite nest formed of lichens. Half ashamed of disclosing such a sacred confidence, I led Georgy up to it. Last Wednesday it was barely finished: now there were three eggs in it. It was a wood-pewee's nest, and while I let her peep the mother-bird flew toward us with a shrill pathetic cry.