"Might I not linger—a few minutes?" he asked.
Her lips parted slightly in a smile, and she turned her head. How wonderfully, he thought, it was poised upon her shoulders.
"I haven't been very hospitable, have I?" she said. But then, you seemed in such a hurry to go, didn't you? You were walking so fast when I met you that you quite frightened me."
"Was I?" asked Austen, in surprise.
She laughed.
"You looked as if you were ready to charge somebody. But this isn't a very nice place—to linger, and if you really will stay awhile," said Victoria, "we might walk over to the dairy, where that model protege of yours, Eben Fitch, whom you once threatened with corporal chastisement if he fell from grace, is engaged. I know he will be glad to see you."
Austen laughed as he caught up with her. She was already halfway across the road.
"Do you always beat people if they do wrong?" she asked.
"It was Eben who requested it, if I remember rightly," he said. "Fortunately, the trial has not yet arrived. Your methods," he added, "seem to be more successful with Eben."
They went down the grassy slope with its groups of half-grown trees; through an orchard shot with slanting, yellow sunlight,—the golden fruit, harvested by the morning winds, littering the ground; and then by a gate into a dimpled, emerald pasture slope where the Guernseys were feeding along a water run. They spoke of trivial things that found no place in Austen's memory, and at times, upon one pretext or another, he fell behind a little that he might feast his eyes upon her.