Page:Lolly Willowes - 1926.djvu/241

 With the gesture of a man who can never hold out against women, he yielded and sat down beside her on the grass.

Laura felt a momentary embarrassment. She had long wished for a reasonable conversation with her Master, but now that her wish seemed about to be granted, she felt rather at a loss for an opening. At last she observed:

"Titus has gone."

"Indeed? Isn't that rather sudden? It was only this afternoon that I met him."

"Yes, I saw you meeting him. At least, I saw him meeting you."

"Just so. It is remarkable," he added, as though he were politely parrying her thought, "how invisible one is on these bare green hillsides."

"Or in these thick brown woods," said Laura rather sternly.

This sort of satanic playfulness was no novelty; Vinegar often behaved in the same fashion, leaping about just out of reach when she wanted to catch him and shut him up indoors.

"Or in these thick brown woods," he concurred. "Folly Wood is especially dense."

"Is?"