Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/204

 Edmund with a mixture of fatherly pride and sheepishness. "Just look at those legs."

The brothers bent over the fat, kicking limbs of the youngster, trying to forget the encounter of a few minutes ago, yet both feeling some constraint.

Fawnie's brown fingers appeared between the slats of the shutters on the window next them. "Please hand me in my baby," she said in a very small voice. "I got to nurse him."

"Open the shutter, then," replied Derek. "I can't put him between the slats."

"I am afraid to open the shutters."

"Why?"

"Because you will hit me."

"Nonsense. If you want the baby, open them."

Cautiously she unlatched a shutter, pushed it a little way open, and put her hands through the opening. Derek laid the baby in them. She drew the child quickly to her and closed the shutters, but they had a glimpse of her smile and her sliding velvet eyes.

"She's just a child," said Derek to Edmund.

"I think she's awfully sly," said Edmund in a tone of profound concern.

They walked through the cherry orchard where black currant bushes set among the trees brushed against them as they passed, yielding their peculiar teasing scent. They crossed a field of stubble, where the turkey hens were grazing and the gobbler circling about them with his wattles flaming as though it were spring, and entered the apple orchard.

"It appears to be a splendid crop," remarked Edmund, looking up at the red and green and yellow fruit hanging so abundantly among the leaves.