Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/181

 fered with, sinned with. Gran had told her all this, and she was very glad she knew such things, for some poor girls was desperate ignorant of their insides and they got into trouble like as not.

She gazed dreamily at the tangle of lush growth around her, the tall Michaelmas daisies, the dogwood with its red stem and lead-coloured berries, the elderberry's richly purple cluster, the flaming spear of the butterfly weed, a patch of fringed gentian, like a bit of the sky fallen. No bluer, though, than the blue heron that started suddenly from among the cat-tails and flapped his great wings upward into the blue above. What had startled him? Someone moving there in the shadow of that black cedar.

It was Perkin. He came towards her slowly, his feet sinking in the moist velvet of the stream's brink, his large grey eyes fixed on her with an odd look.

"Why, Perkin, is that you?" And she explained: "I'm gathering watercress for my tea."

He came out on the board and knelt down beside her.

"Getting watercress, eh? You've struck a quiet place all right. It's as quiet as the bottom of the sea, ain't it?"

"There's a fresh growth come up. It's as tender as can be. Don't you like watercress?"

He shook his head. "I don't like any green stuff."

"Not when it's young and tender?" She did not like him so close beside her in that lonely spot. She did not like the way his breath came, so quickly and yet so heavily. Trying to be unembarrassed, a little playful, she held the fresh wet bunch of watercress against his mouth.

"Buy my watercress," she intoned, imitating an Old Country vender. "Fresh and tender. Fresh and tender."

In a sudden anger he tore it from her hand and flung it back into the stream. Then with a boy's sudden brutality he caught her to him and pressed his face cruelly