Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/331

Rh They came to the kennels. She sat down on the edge of the great stone water trough, and put her hands in the water, moving them gently like submerged flowers through the clear pool.

“I love to see myself in the water,” she said, “I don’t mean on the water, Narcissus—but that’s how I should like to be out west, to have a little lake of my own, and swim with my limbs quite free in the water.”

“Do you swim well?” he asked.

“Fairly.”

“I would race you—in your little lake.”

She laughed, took her hands out of the water, and watched the clear drops trickle off. Then she lifted her head suddenly, at some thought or other. She looked across the valley, and saw the red roofs of the Mill. “What’s that?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“That’s a private trough,” exclaimed a thin voice, high like a peewit’s cry. We started in surprise to see a tall, black-bearded man looking at us and away from us nervously, fidgeting uneasily some ten yards off.

“Is it?” said Lettie, looking at her wet hands, which she proceeded to dry on a fragment of a handkerchief.

“You mustn’t meddle with it,” said the man, in the same reedy, oboe voice. Then he turned his head