’Why, nothing, Miss Wych, dear!—­I mean,’—­Mrs. Bywank hesitated.

‘You mean a great deal, I see,’ said Wych Hazel.  ’But do not you see, Byo, I cannot hang out false colours?  There is no sort of use in my pretending not to be wild, because I am.’

Mrs. Bywank looked up in the young face,—­loving and anxious.

‘Miss Wych,’ she said, ’what men of sense disapprove, young ladies in general had better not do.’

‘O, I cannot follow you there,’ said Wych Hazel.  ’Suppose, for instance, Mr. Rollo (I presume you mean him by “men of sense”) took a kink against my brown dress?’

Not very likely, Mrs. Bywank thought, as she looked at the figure before her.  If Hazel had been a wood nymph a week ago she was surely the loveliest of brown fairies to-day.  But still the old housekeeper sighed.

‘My dear, I know the world,’ she began.

‘And I don’t,’ said Hazel.  ’I am so glad!  Never fear, Byo, for to-day at least I have got Mr. Falkirk between me and mischief.  And there he is this minute, wanting his breakfast.’

But to judge by the housekeeper’s face as she looked after her young mistress down the stairs, that barrier was not quite all that could be wished.  However, if impenetrability were enough for a barrier, Mr. Falkirk could have met any inquisitions that morning.

He came to breakfast as usual; but this morning breakfast simply meant business.  He ate his toast and read his newspaper.  With the ending of breakfast came Rollo.  And the party presently issued forth into the woods which were to be the scene of the day’s work.

The woods of Chickaree were old and fine.  For many years undressed and neglected, they had come at last to a rather rampant state of anarchy and misrule.  Feebler, though perhaps not less promising members were oppressed by the overtopping growth of the stronger; there was an upstart crowd of young wood; and the best intentioned trees were hurting each other’s efforts, because of want of room.  It was a lovely wilderness into which the party plunged, and the June morning sat in the tops of the trees and laughed down at them.  Human nature could hardly help laughing back in return, so utterly joyous were sun and sky, birds and insects and trees altogether.  They went first to the wilderness through which Rollo and Wych Hazel had made their way on foot one morning; lying near to the house and in the immediate region of its owner’s going and coming.  Herein were great white oaks lifting their heads into greater silver pines.  Here were superb hemlocks threatened by a usurping growth of young deciduous trees.  There were dogwoods throwing themselves across everything; and groups of maples and beeches struggling with each other.  As yet the wild growth was in many instances beautiful; the damage it was doing was beyond the reach of any but an experienced eye.  Here and there a cross in white chalk upon the trunk of a tree was to be seen.