to keep a chill off than beer," they duly put out the lantern, with which they had been bidden "to be real careful because of the yay," and listened to the clear, dispassionate voice saying, as its owner passed the loft--
"You go ter yer bed, Adam, an' sleep while you can. She's passed midnight, and it wunt come now till dawn; but I ain't the mind to sleep. They lies too heavy, poor dears."
"That woman," said Ned, from his blanketed bed in the hay, "ought to have been a Field Marshal or a Prime Minister."
There was absolute conviction in his voice.
CHAPTER III
They found the summer sun had been at work for some hours on the storm-drenched world ere they woke to the lowing roar of the heifer from the neighbouring cow-house. Motherhood had evidently come to her at dawn, bringing its wider outlook, its larger self; and sure enough, when they scrambled down from the loft, they found at the foot of the ladder, penned in by an old door, a big, black bull-calf lustily answering anxiety by assertion.
The cottage over against them, however,--it formed part of a long range of farm-steadings, which stretched right away to the stream they had crossed the night before--showed no sign of life. The door was closed, the window-blinds down; the inmates were most likely sleeping sound after their broken rest.
So, their clothes being still damp, the two young men went up stream to a long, deep pool, and spreading them out to dry in the hot sunshine, had a morning bath, thereinafter drying themselves in the same fashion on a grassy bank, whence, looking up the valley, they could see the mountains closing in on the narrow strip of level pasture. Behind them, the downward view was absolutely shut out by the farm-buildings, above which showed a yew tree, and by a dense clump of rhododendrons, which trended away until it met the other wooded hillside of the little glen.
"I believe we are really on an island," remarked Ted, critically appraising the values of some willows and elders which, higher up beyond the pasture fields, seemed to betoken another channel of water.
"A desert island," said Ned, busy over the intricacies of cold water and a razor from his, shoulder-wallet. "We are reduced to the makeshifts of primitive manhood. What more do we want?--and all without that hundred pounds! I never slept better than I did in that hay."
"Small blame to you with feather pillows and best Whitney blankets! And as for money--we shall have to tip these people. I suppose half-a-crown will do----"
"Ahem," replied Ned somewhat doubtfully; "but it was beastly late, you know."
"Very; but that wasn't our doing: they were up with the 'hi'fer.' However, let's put it at three shillings."
"But, my dear fellow, consider the beefsteak pie--it was simply the best pie----"
"Charge it to appetite," said Ted, rising ready dressed, supple, clean, and strong. "Three shillings is ample. Come along if you're ready, and let us get off. I'm keen to start."
He looked it; but the starting was not so easy, for though on trial the door of the cottage was found to be on the latch only, no one could be made to hear.
"Let's leave the tip on the table," suggested Ted impatiently.
"My dear fellow," replied Ned, "I won't go without seeing the 'General,' and thanking her for that excellent pie. Besides--think how she simply scooped us up last night like half-drowned kittens and set us going again! I tell you, sir, that if--it being Saturday night--she had suggested washing my head, I'd have submitted meekly, as I used with old nurse. Why! I dreamt about frilled drawers all last night!"
Ted was irresponsive; a word had arrested his attention. "Saturday!" he echoed thoughtfully, "then to-day is Sunday!"
"First Sunday after Whitsun--No! Trinity Sunday, of course, the shortest night in the year and Midsummer Night's Dream all combined. How time flies...."
"What luck!" gloomed Ted. "I shouldn't wonder if the smith were to refuse us our cycles--they are like that in these wild parts--what beastly bad luck!"
Here Ned, who had been prospecting at the back of the passage, opened a door, suspecting it to be possibly a coal-cellar; but he fell back from the sudden blaze of almost blinding sunlight which poured in from a long, low, absolutely empty room, which stretched away on either side over boards scrubbed to whiteness to a wide oriel window.
At that on the left-hand side stood a parrot-perch, beside which was a tall girl in blue engaged in making a white cockatoo with a yellow crest talk.
"Gimme a sixpence," it muttered hurriedly as the bit of banana turned away with the girl at the interruption.
So for a second or two they stood; the two young men smitten helpless by the extreme beauty of that girlish figure, framed as it was by the great sprays of white June clematis and great trusses of scarlet ivy geranium from the garden beyond the window.
"Gimme a sixpence, gimme a sixpence," reiterated the cockatoo in guttural allurement. Then the girl smiled.
"You must have been very wet last night, I'm afraid," she said in an absolutely perfect voice, true, pure, sweet; the real voice of the siren, which none who hear forget.
The two at the door, who stood bare-headed, almost doubting the evidence of their own eyes, gave an audible sigh of relief. This was no vision then, this beauty of womanhood pure, and simple, with softly smiling eyes.
And yet? They glanced at each other doubtfully, and the three shillings in Ted's palm seemed suddenly to become hot and scorch him. Impossible to offer three shillings to perfection!
"Thank you, yes--I mean no--I mean that we were wet, quite wet--but now thanks to the kindness of your----" Ned paused. Much as he admired "the General," he could not affiliate to her this radiant creature.
Ted, becoming conscious vaguely that here was something new to him, something which held possible danger to his outlook in life, remembered his hurry and came to the point.
"We are very much obliged, and so, if you please, as we are about to start, we should like--I mean if you----"
Here absolute terror lest Ted should really offer those three shillings to the glorious creature in the first flush of a womanhood which seemed to Ned to be worth the whole world, made him step forward, holding out a shining sovereign.
"We've really been most awfully comfortable," he said apologetically, "and if you--if you wouldn't mind giving this----"
"Why!" she exclaimed, all eagerness, snatching at the coin, "I believe it's a sovereign! Fancy that! A whole sovereign!"
Ned felt outraged at her indecent haste; and at the back of Ted's brain lay an instant regret concerning the three shillings; he would then only have been responsible for one and sixpence instead of ten shillings.
Suddenly she held the coin up to the window, laughed--a rippling laugh like running water--and handed it back again. "Thanks for letting me see it; I hadn't seen one before, but, as grandfather says, it blocks the sunlight just like a penny!"
"You--you
