Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/78

 Vale laughed and began to pick, too. "I was surprised to find you here, Fawnie."

"I wanted to help you, and Jammery said I could. We've been here since the first crack o' day."

"Good girl. I'll do something nice for you."

"What?" She was choosing two pairs of the finest cherries from her basket.

"What would you like?"

She hung the cherries over her ears like scarlet earrings and looked at him. The ruddy shine of the fruit, hardly fresher than her pouting lips; the dark masses of her hair, her slender, coffee-coloured neck, her slanting, humid eyes awoke in Derek the same sensation he had had when he watched her bathe. He experienced an intense consciousness of the earth—mother of him and of all thriving, air-sucking things—men, deer in the forest, trees interlacing their branches in the wind and their roots in the life-giving soil—all driven by the same force, all feeling the same, sharp, sweet urge. . . . He took her in his arms and kissed her quickly on the cheeks and mouth. They clung together till the voice of Newbigging below made them start apart.

"Hoo many hae ye plucked, master?" he said, with a broad grin on his upturned face.

Vale looked down at him sternly. "Get about your work, Newbigging. If I have any cheek from you, you'll go."

He was abashed, mortified at being caught in such a position. He fancied the jests that would pass among the men. He stared, red-faced, at his dangling boots for a space, and then muttered, sulkily—

"You're a little baggage, Fawnie."

She smiled at him from under her lashes. "You mean I act like I was white," she said.