“There’s nothing like a boy of that age for use upon a picnic, Mrs. Linceford,” Leslie had pleaded, with playful parody, in his behalf, when the lady had hinted something of her former sentiment concerning the encroachments and monopolies of “boys of that age.”  And so he came.

The Haddens got Jim Holden to lift them down on the opposite side, for a run to the verge of the projecting half-circle of rock that, like a gigantic bay-window or balcony in the mighty architecture of the hills, looked up and down the whole perspective of the valley.  Jim Holden would readily have driven them round its very edge upon the flat, mossy sward, but for Mrs. Linceford’s nerves, and the vague idea of almost an accident having occurred there lately which pervaded the little party.  “Creggin’s horses had backed,” as Florrie Arnall said; and already the new comers had picked up, they scarcely knew how, the incipient tradition, hereafter to grow into an established horror of the “Cliff.”

“It was nothing,” Jim Holden said; “only the nigh hoss was a res’less crittur, an’ contrived to git his leg over the pole; no danger with his cattle.”  But Mrs. Linceford cried out in utter remonstrance, and only begged Leslie to be quick, that they might get away from the place altogether.

All this bustle of arrival and discussion and alighting had failed, curiously, to turn the head of an odd, unkempt-looking child,—­a girl of nine or ten, with an old calico sun-bonnet flung back upon her shoulders, tangled, sunburnt hair tossing above it; gown, innocent of crinoline, clinging to lank, growing limbs, and bare feet, whose heels were energetically planted at a quite safe distance from each other, to insure a fair base for the centre of gravity,—­who, at the moment of their coming, was wrathfully “shoo-ing” off from a bit of rude toy-garden, fenced with ends of twigs stuck up-right, a tall Shanghai hen and her one chicken, who had evidently made nothing, morally or physically, of the feeble inclosure.

“I wish you were dead and in your gravies!” cried the child, achieving, between her righteous indignation and her relenting toward her uncouth pets at the last breath, a sufficiently queer play upon her own word.  And with this, the enemy being routed, she turned face to face with Dakie Thayne and Leslie Goldthwaite, coming in at the dilapidated gate.

“They’ve scratched up all my four-o’clocks!” she said.  And then her rustic shyness overcame suddenly all else, and she dragged her great toe back and forth in the soft mould, and put her forefinger in her mouth, and looked askance at them from the corners of her eyes.

“Prissy?  Prissy Hoskins?” Leslie addressed her in sweet, inquiring tones.  But the child stood still with finger in mouth, and toe working in the ground, not a bit harder nor faster, nor changing in the least, for more or less, the shy look in her face.

“That’s your name, isn’t it?  I’ve got something for you.  Won’t you come and get it?’” Leslie paused, waiting; fearing lest a further advance on her own part might put Prissy altogether to flight.  Nothing answered in the girl’s eyes to her words; there was no lighting up of desire or curiosity, however restrained; she stood like one indifferent or uncomprehending.