Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/358

350 impression. She put out her hand with a dramatic gesture, and looked at me, when the scythe crunched through the meadow-sweet.

“Crunch!—isn’t it fine!” she exclaimed, “a kind of inevitable fate—I think it’s fine!”

We wandered about picking flowers and talking until teatime. A man-servant came with the tea-basket, and the girls spread the cloth under a great willow tree. Lettie took the little silver kettle, and went to fill it at the small spring which trickled into a stone trough all pretty with cranesbill and stellaria hanging over, while long blades of grass waved in the water. George, who had finished his work, and wanted to go home to tea, walked across to the spring where Lettie sat playing with the water, getting little cupfuls to put into the kettle, watching the quick skating of the water beetles, and the large faint spots of their shadows darting on the silted mud at the bottom of the trough.

She glanced round on hearing him coming, and smiled nervously: they were mutually afraid of meeting each other again.

“It is about teatime,” he said.

“Yes—it will be ready in a moment—this is not to make the tea with—it’s only to keep a little supply of hot water.”

“Oh,” he said, “I’ll go on home—I’d rather.”

“No,” she replied, “you can’t, because we are all having tea together: I had some fruits put up, because I know you don’t trifle with tea—and your father’s coming.”

“But,” he replied pettishly, “I can’t have my tea with all those folks—I don’t want to—look at me!”