‘Get on to my back, then,’ said Serge.

’No, no; I’d rather not.  If you were to slip, we should both of us get a famous wetting.  You don’t know how treacherous those stones are.’

‘Get on to my back,’ repeated Serge.

She was tempted to do so.  She stepped back for a spring, and then jumped up, like a boy; but she felt that Serge was tottering; and crying out that she was not safely seated, she got down again.  However, after two more attempts, she managed to settle herself securely on Serge’s back.

‘When you are quite ready,’ said the young man, laughing, ’we will start.  Now, hold on tightly.  We are off.’

And, with three light strides, he crossed the stream, scarcely wetting even his toes.  Midway, however, Albine thought that he was slipping.  She broke out into a little scream, and hugged him tightly round his neck.  But he sprang forward, and carried her at a gallop over the fine sand on the other side.

‘Gee up!’ she cried, quite calm again, and delighted with this novel game.

He ran along with her for some distance, she clucking her tongue, and guiding him to right or left by some locks of his hair.

‘Here—­here we are,’ she said at last, tapping him gently on the cheeks.

Then she jumped to the ground; while he, hot and perspiring, leaned against a tree to draw breath.  Albine thereupon began to scold him, and threatened that she would not nurse him if he made himself ill again.

‘Stuff!’ he cried, ’it’s done me good.  When I have grown quite strong again, I will carry you about all day.  But where are you taking me?’

‘Here,’ she said, as she seated herself beneath a huge pear-tree.

They were in the old orchard of the park.  A hawthorn hedge, a real wall of greenery with here and there a gap, separated it from everything else.  There was quite a forest of fruit trees, which no pruning knife had touched for a century past.  Some of the trees had been strangely warped and twisted by the storms which had raged over them; while others, bossed all over with huge knots and full of deep holes, seemed only to hold on to the soil with their bark.  The high branches, bent each year by weight of fruit, stretched out like big rackets; and each tree helped to keep its fellows erect.  The trunks were like twisted pillars supporting a roof of greenery; and sometimes narrow cloisters, sometimes light halls were formed, while now and again the verdure swept almost to the ground and left scarcely room to pass.  Round each colossus a crowd of wild and self-sown saplings had grown up, thicket-like with the entanglement of their young shoots.  In the greenish light which filtered like tinted water through the foliage, in the deep silence of the mossy soil, one only heard the dull thud of the fruit as it was culled by the wind.