“About two weeks ago,” she began, looking over the landscape, and not at me, “I was sitting in the arbor below, and I heard Mrs.—­well, a lady coming whom, to be sincere with you, I dislike.  If I stayed, I knew she would have a long talk with me:  if I walked on, she might call me back.  I looked about in haste for a hiding-place.  The bushes near me appeared as if I might get behind them:  I pushed through, saw a little path, which I followed, turned round the base of a hillock, and found two rocks, upon which I raised myself with the help of a sapling.  Then, carefully parting the branches, I saw this,” waving her small hand that I might see it, but still not looking at me.  “The sun was just setting; away down in yonder field the sorrel was as fire in its rays; a catbird was reciting a merry pastoral in the thicket beyond; two goats stood high on a bank, like satyrs guarding the place.  You see why I come again.”

“I have the right of discovery,” I cried gayly:  “I made the path and placed the rocks.  I claim it, that I may lay it at your feet.”

“Do you like it?” she asked, turning to me and laying a slight stress on “you.”

“I told you I admired pretty things, and you know, Miss Blanche, I am a bit of a poet.”

She smiled:  “Ah yes; but do you really admire this?”

“Of course I do—­think it dem foine.”

She laughed outright—­a laugh so gay that I joined her, though I could not tell why.  “As for sorrel,” I added, “you ought to see The Beauties:  the fields are full of it, though the farmers don’t seem to admire it much.”

“Well, I am very fond of the sorrel,” she replied, “with the clover-tops, the seed-globes of dandelion and the daisies by the water:  it makes quite a bouquet in yonder field.”

I looked at her to see if she was chaffing me:  not at all—­she was sober as a judge.

“Dem foine!  I beg pardon, very nice indeed.  How would you like to carry it to the ball this evening?”

“I never take anything to a ball that I care to have appreciated,” she answered dryly.

“Aw!  That is the reason you won’t sing down there:  isn’t it, now?  But, really, they thought it fine the other night—­quite clever, I heard some of them say.”

“Oh yes,” with a weary smile that had a little contempt in it.

“Did that ugly little Italian know very much about singing?  You seemed pleased with his admiration.”

“That ugly Italian, as you call him, has heard some of the best prima donnas in Europe.  He is poor, he is seedy—­for his voice left him just as he was on the eve of success—­but he was the only person in the room who could tell me that I sang as well as the greatest of them.”  Her voice quivered as she spoke.

“You are mistaken indeed, Miss Blanche,” I said.  “Any fellow there would have paid you the same compliment if you had given him a chance; but you were so confoundedly wrapped up in that Italian chap that you would not look at the rest of us.”