“What are you saying?” I protested, miserably.

She dropped her hands from her face and gazed at me quite calmly.

“Saying?  I was saying that these rocks are wet, and that I was silly to come down here in my Pompadour shoes and stockings, and I’m silly to stay here, and I’m going!”

And go she did, up over the moss and rock like a fawn, and I after her to the top of the bank, where she seemed vastly surprised to see me.

“Now I pray you choose which way you mean to stroll,” she said, impatiently.  “Here lie two paths, and I will take this straight and narrow one.”

She turned sharply and I with her, and for a long time we walked swiftly, side by side, exchanging neither word nor glance until at last she stopped short, seated herself on a mossy log, and touched her hot face with a crumpled bit of lace and cambric.

“I tell you what, Mr. Longshanks!” she said.  “I shall go no farther with you unless you talk to me.  Mercy on the lad with his seven-league boots!  He has me breathless and both hat-strings flying and my shoe-points dragging to trip my heels!  Sit down, sir, till I knot my ribbons under my ear; and I’ll thank you to tie my shoe-points!  Not doubled in a sailor’s-knot, silly!...  And, oh, cousin, I would I had a sun-mask!...  Now you are laughing!  Oh, I know you think me a country hoyden, careless of sunburn and dust!  But I’m not.  I love a smooth, white skin as well as any London beau who praises it in verses.  And I shall have one for myself, too.  You may see, to-night, if the Misses Carmichael come with Lady Schuyler, for we’ll have a dance, perhaps, and I mean to paint and patch and powder till you’d swear me a French marquise!...  Cousin, this narrow forest pathway leads across the water back to the house.  Shall we take it?...  You will have to carry me over the stream, for I’ll not wet my shins for love of any man, mark that!”

She tied her pink hat-ribbons under her chin and stood up while I made ready; then I lifted her from the ground.  Very gravely she dropped her arms around my neck as I stepped into the rushing current and waded out, the water curling almost to my knee-buckles.  So we crossed the grist-mill stream in silence, eyes averted from each other’s faces; and in silence, too, we resumed the straight and narrow path, now deep with last year’s leaves, until we came to a hot, sandy bank covered with wild strawberries, overlooking the stream.

In a moment she was on her knees, filling her handkerchief with strawberries, and I sat down in the yellow sand, eyes following the stream where it sparkled deep under its leafy screen below.

“Cousin,” she said, timidly, “are you displeased?”

“Why?”

“At my tyranny to make you bear me across the stream—­with all your heavier burdens, and my own—­”

“I ask no sweeter burdens,” I replied.

She seated herself in the sand and placed a scarlet berry between lips that matched it.