Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/273

Rh "And you were really thinking that?"

"Really! I suppose it was the sight of the birds yonder put it into my head."

He looks at me amusedly.

"I wonder if you could keep a secret if you had one?" he says. "I think you would bring it straight out. I always know when you are glad or sorry, vexed or pleased, in an instant; do you think you could be deceitful, if you tried?"

"You don't know what stories I can tell at a pinch," I say, laughing; "and if that is not being deceitful, what is?"

"You do not mean that you tell lies?"

"What a downright word! How ugly it makes the smallest deviation from truth look! No, my fibs are only harmless ones, extemporized to save the boys from getting into rows with papa, and so forth. I don't ever remember telling a real lie."

"And you have never deceived anybody?" he asks, with a strange persistence.

"Never!" I say, truly—for have I not told George the plain unvarnished truth hundreds and hundreds of times?

Luncheon is over, and most of the men are not sitting, but lounging at their ease, with a comfort very irritating to feminine eyes. Alice and Milly are making use of their respective lords by leaning against them dos-à-dos; the attitude is comfortable, but not particularly elegant. A score of yards away a stalwart oak presents to our view a stout brown body that offers friendly support to an aching back, and towards it I turn my eyes.

"You are tired," says Paul; "shall we go and sit over there?"

He holds out his hand, pulls me up, and in another minute we are sitting against the old monarch.

"How tired that lord must have got who went on a tour round England without once leaning back in his carriage!" I say laugh-