Page:Daphne, an Autumn Pastoral.djvu/83

 Hermes gave an incredible jump high in the air, lighted on his four feet, pranced, gamboled, curveted.

"It is very hard to know one's duty or to do it, Hermes," said Daphne, patting his woolly brow. Hermes intimated, by means of frisking legs and tail, that he would not try.

"I believe you are bewitched," said the girl, suddenly taking him up in her arms. "I believe you are some little changeling god sent by your master Apollo to put his thoughts into my head."

He squirmed, and she put him down. Then she gave him a harmless slap on his fleecy side.

"But you aren't a good interpreter, Hermes. Some way I think that his joyousness lies the other side of pain. He never ran away from hard things."

This was more than the lambkin could understand or bear, and he fled, hiding from her in