Isabel was up a ladder in the orchard picking plums.  Waving her hand to Laura and Lawrence Hyde, she called out to them to look the other way while she came down.  It must be owned that neither Laura nor Lawrence obeyed her, and they were rewarded, while she felt about for the top rung, with an unimpeded view of two very pretty legs.  Lawrence really thought she was going to fall out of the tree, but eventually she came safe to earth, and approached holding out a basket full of glowing fruit.  “Though you don’t deserve them,” she said reproachfully, “because I could feel you looking at me.  I did think I should be safe at this hour in the morning!”

“Do I see Val?” said Laura, screwing up her eyes to peer in through the slats of the green jalousies.  “I’ll go and talk him round, while you break the news to Miss Stafford.  Such do’s, Isabel!  You don’t know what dissipations are in store for you, if only Val will say yes.”  She like every one else elevated Val to the parental dignity vice Mr. Stafford deposed.

“He’s come in for some lunch.  He’ll love to have you watch him eat,” said Isabel.  “What’s it to be, Captain Hyde?  A picnic?”

Isabel’s imagination had never soared beyond a picnic.  When Lawrence unfolded the London scheme her eyes grew round with astonishment and an awed silence fell on her.  “Oh, it won’t happen,” she said, when she had recovered sufficiently to reply at all.  “Nothing so angelically wonderful ever would happen to me.  I’m perfectly certain Val will say no.  Now we’ve settled that, you can tell me all about it, because of course you and Laura will go in any case.”

“But that’s precisely what we can’t do.”  Gently and imperceptibly Lawrence impelled her through the rose archway into the kitchen garden, where they were partly sheltered behind the walls of lilacs, a little thinner than they had been in June but still an effective screen.  He had not found himself alone with Isabel for ten days.  Since Val was with Laura, Lawrence drew the rather cynical conclusion that he could count on a breathing space, and he wondered if Isabel too were glad of it.  She was in a brown cotton dress, her right sleeve still tucked up high on her bare arm:  a rounded slender arm not much tanned even at the wrist, for her skin was almost impervious to sunburn.  Above the elbow it was milk-white with a faint bloom on it, in texture not like ivory, which is a dead, cold, and polished material, but like a flower petal, one of those flowers that have a downy sheen on them, white hyacinths or tall lilies.  Lawrence fixed his eyes on it unconsciously but so steadily that Isabel became aware of his admiration.  She blushed and was going to pull down her sleeve, but checked herself, and turning a little away, so that she could pretend not to know that he was looking at her, raised her arm to smooth her hair, lifting it and pushing a loosened hairpin into place.  After all . . .  This was Isabel’s first venture into coquetry.  But it was half unconscious.