The soft thudding of cows’ feet through the red mud of a Devon lane—the chirruping call of a girl’s voice in their rear—the warning note of a blackbird in the hedge—and the magic fragrance of honeysuckle everywhere! Was ever summer day so fair? Was ever world so green?

“Drat that young Minnie! If she hasn’t taken the wrong turning again!” cried the voice that had chirruped to the herd, and there followed a chuckling laugh that had in it that indescribable sweetness of tone which is peculiar only to those of a contented mind.

It took Frances Thorold by storm—that laugh. She got up swiftly from her knoll, sketching block in hand, to peer over the hedge.

The hedge was ragged and the lane was deep, but she caught a glimpse of the red cows, trooping by, and of the pink dress and wildly untidy hair of their attendant. Then there came a sharp whistle, and a dog went scampering by, audible but unseen in the leafy depth of the lane. There followed a blundering check among the animals, and then again the clear, happy voice calling to order and the equally cheery bark of the dog.

“That’ll do, Roger! Come back!” cried the bright voice. “Minnie won’t do it again till next time, so you needn’t scold. Now, Penelope, what are you stopping for? Get on, old girl! Don’t hold up the traffic! Ah, here’s a motor-car!”

It was not annoyance so much as a certain comic resignation that characterized the last sentence. The buzz of an engine and the sharp grinding of brakes upon skidding wheels succeeded it, and Frances, still peering over the ragged hedge, flushed suddenly and deeply, almost to the colour of the sorrel that grew about her feet.

She made a small movement as though she would withdraw herself, but some stronger motive kept her where she was. The car came grinding to a standstill almost abreast of her, and she heard the animals go blundering past.

“Thank you, sir,” called the fresh voice, with its irresistible trill of gaiety. “Sorry we take up so much room.”

“Don’t mention it! You’re as much right as I—if not more,” called back the driver of the car.

Frances stirred then, stirred and drew back. She left her green vantage-ground and sat down again on the bank. Her eyes returned to her sketching-block, and she began to work industriously. The hot colour receded slowly from her face. It took on a still, mask-like expression as though carved in marble. But the tired look had wholly left it, and the drawn lines about the mouth were barely perceptible. They looked now as if they sought to repress a smile.

She chose a tiny paint-brush from her box, and began to work with minute care. The sketch under her hand was an exquisite thing, delicate as a miniature—just a brown stream with stepping-stones and beyond them the corner of an old thatched barn—Devon in summer-time. The babble of the stream and the buzz of a million insects were in that tender little sketch with its starry, meadow flowers and soft grey shadows. She had revelled in the making of it, and now it was nearly finished.

She had counted upon finishing it that afternoon, but for some reason, after that episode in the lane, her hand seemed to have lost its cunning. With the fine brush between her fingers she stopped, for her hand was shaking. A faint frown, swiftly banished, drew her brows, and then one of them went up at a humorous angle, and she began to smile.

The next moment very quietly she returned the brush unused to its box, laid both sketching-block and paints aside, and clasped her hands about her knees, waiting.

The commotion in the lane had wholly ceased, but there was a sound of feet squelching in the mud on the other side of the hedge. Frances turned her head to listen. Finally, the smile still about her lips, she spoke.

“Are you looking for someone?”

“By Jove!” cried back a voice in swift and hearty response. “So you’re there, are you? I thought I couldn’t be wrong—through a stream and past a barn, and down a hill—what damnable hills they are too in this part of the world! How on earth does one get up there?”

Quite concisely and without agitation she made reply. “One usually goes to the bottom of the hill, opens a gate and walks up on the other side.”

“Oh, that’s too much to ask,” protested the voice below her. “Isn’t there some hole where one can get through?”

“If one doesn’t mind spoiling one’s clothes,” said Frances.

“Oh, damn the clothes—this infernal mud too for that matter! Here goes!”

There followed sounds of a leap and a scramble—a violent shaking of the nut-trees and brambles that composed the hedge—and finally a man’s face, laughing and triumphant, appeared above the confusion.

“By gad,” he said, “you look as if you were on a throne!”

She smiled at him, without rising. “It is quite a comfortable perch. I come here every day. In fact,” she indicated the sketching-block by her side. “This is how I amuse myself.”

He came to her, carrying a trail of honeysuckle which he laid at her feet. “May I share the throne?” he said.

She looked at him, not touching the flowers, her smile faintly quizzical. “You can sit on a corner of this rug if you like. It is rather a ragged affair, but it serves its purpose.”

She indicated the corner furthest from her, and Rotherby dropped down upon it with a satisfied air. “Oh, this is a loafer’s paradise. How are you getting on, Miss Thorold? You look—” he regarded her critically—“you look like one who has bathed in magic dew.”

She met his look, her own wholly impersonal. “I feel rather like that,” she said. “It has been a wonderful fortnight. I am quite ready for work.”

He leaned upon his elbow, still carelessly watching her. “Have you learnt to milk cows yet?” he asked.

“Well, no!” She laughed a little. “But I have several times watched the operation. You saw that girl just now, driving the cows back to pasture for the night. She comes from such a dear old farm on the moor called Tetherstones. I have stood at the door of the cowshed and watched her. She is wonderfully quick at it.”

“Is she going to give you lessons?” he said idly.

“I haven’t got to the point of asking her yet. We only pass the time of day when we meet.”

Frances picked up her sketching-block again. Her hand was quite steady now.

“May I see?” said Rotherby.

“When it is finished,” she said.

“No, now, please!” His tone had a hint of imperiousness.

She leaned forward with the faintest possible suggestion of indulgence, such as one might show to a child, and gave it to him.

He took it in silence, studied it at first casually, then more closely, with growing interest, finally looked up at her.

“You ought to find a ready market for this sort of thing. It’s exquisite.”

She coloured then vividly, almost painfully, and the man’s eyes kindled, watching her.

“Do you really think that?” she asked in a low voice.

“Of course I do. It isn’t to my interest to say it, is it? You’ve mistaken your vocation.”

He smiled with the words and gave her back the sketch.

“It isn’t a paying game—except for the chosen few. But I believe I could find you a market for this sort of thing. I had no idea you were so talented.”

“It has always been my pastime,” said Frances rather wistfully. “But I couldn’t make a living at it.”

“You could augment a living,” he said.

“Ah! But one needs interest for that. And I—” she hesitated—“I don’t think I am very good at pushing my wares.”

He laughed. “Well, I’ll supply the interest—such as it is. I’ll do my best anyway. You go on sketching for a bit, and I’ll come and look on and admire. Shall I?”

She gave him a steady look. “When are you going to begin your book?”

“Oh, that!” he spoke with easy assurance. “That’ll have to keep for a bit. I’m not in the mood for it yet. By and by,—in the winter——”

Her face changed a little. “In that case,” she said, slowly, “I ought to set about finding another post.”

“Oh, rot!” said Montague with lightness. “Why?”

She turned from her steady regard of him, and looked down at the sketch in her hand. “Because,” she said, her voice chill and constrained as was its habit in moments of emotion, “I haven’t money to carry me on till then. I shouldn’t have wasted this fortnight if I had known.”

“It hasn’t been wasted,” argued Montague, still careless and unimpressed. “You couldn’t have done without it.”

She did not lift her eyes. “It is quite true I needed a rest,” she said, “but I could have employed the time in trying to find another post. I could have advertised. I could have answered advertisements.”

“And ended up as you are now minus the cost of the postage,” said Montague.

She took up her brush again. “Yes, that is quite possible; but I should have had the satisfaction of knowing that I had done my best.”

“You’ve done much more for yourself by just taking a rest and sketching,” said Montague. “Have you done any besides this?”

She answered him with her eyes upon her work. “Three.”

“Will you let me see them?”

“If you wish.”

“When?”

“Whenever you like.”

“May I come round to-night then—sometime after dinner? I went round to your diggings just now. It was the old woman who sent me on here. Extraordinary old witch! Does she make you comfortable?”

“The place is quite clean,” said Frances.

“That’s non-committal. What’s the food like?”

“I don’t suppose you would care for it. It is quite plain, but it is good. It suits me all right, and it suits my purse.”

He pounced upon the words. “Then why in heaven’s name worry? A little extra holiday never hurt anyone, and you have got your sketching.”

“I can’t afford it,” said Frances.

“But if you can sell some of your work.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Well, I can for you. It’s the same thing. Look here, Miss Thorold! You’re not being reasonable.”

She turned again and faced him. Her eyes were very quiet, quite inscrutable.

“It is not that I am unreasonble, Mr. Rotherby,” she said. “It is simply you—who do not understand.”

There was stubbornness in his answering look. “I understand perfectly,” he said. “I know what you are afraid of. But if you will only leave things to me, it won’t happen. After all, you promised to be my secretary, didn’t you? You can’t seriously mean to let me down?”

“I!” Her eyes widened and darkened in genuine surprise. “I don’t think you can very well accuse me of that,” she said.

“Can’t I? In spite of the fact that you are threatening to throw me over?” There was a bantering note in his voice, but his look was wary.

“I must think of myself,” she said. “You forget I have got to make my living.”

“No, I haven’t forgotten. But there are more ways than one of doing that.” His look fell suddenly to the trailing honeysuckle at her feet and dwelt there with an odd abstraction. “Surely you can fill in time as I have suggested,” he said. “You won’t be a loser in the end.”

“I like to feel I am standing on firm ground,” said Frances Thorold, and returned to her sketch with an air of finality as though thereby the subject were closed.

Montague took out a cigarette-case and opened it, offering it to her with the same abstracted air.

She shook her head without looking at him. “No, thank you. I’ve never taken to it. I’ve never had time.”

“It seems to me that you have never had time for anything that’s worth doing,” he said, as he took one himself.

“That is true,” she said in her brief way.

There fell a silence between them. Montague leaned upon his elbow smoking, his eyes half-closed, but still curiously fixed upon the long spray of honeysuckle as though the flowers presented to him some problem.

Frances worked gravely at her sketch, just as she had worked in the Bishop’s room at Burminster a fortnight before, too deeply absorbed to spare any attention for any interest outside that upon which she was engaged. It was her way to concentrate thus.

Suddenly through the summer silence there came a sound—the voice of a little child singing in the lane below—an unintelligible song, without tune, but strangely sweet, as the first soft song of a twittering bird in the dawning.

Frances lifted her head. She looked at Montague. “Did you leave your car in the lane?”

“I did,” he said, wondering a little at the sudden anxiety in her eyes.

“Ah!” She was on her feet with the word, her sketching almost flung aside. “She’ll run into it.”

“Absurd!” he protested. “Not if she has eyes to see!”

“Ah!” Frances said again. “She hasn’t!”

She was gone even while she spoke, springing for the gap through which he had forced his way a few minutes earlier, calling as she went in tones tender, musical, such as he had never believed her capable of uttering. “Mind, little darling! Mind! Wait till I come to you!”

She was gone from his sight. He heard her slipping down the bank into the mud of the lane. He heard the child’s voice lifted in wonder but not in fear.

“You are the pretty lady who came to see the cows. May I hold your hand?”

And Frances’ answering voice with a deep throb in it that oddly made the listening man stiffen as one who listens to undreamt-of music:—“Of course you shall, sweetheart. We will walk up the road together and find some honeysuckle.”

The man’s eyes came swiftly downwards to the flowers that trailed neglected where her feet had been. So she did love honeysuckle after all! With a movement of violence half-suppressed he snatched up the pink and white blossoms and threw them away.