“You don’t remember me, I’m afraid!” The boy shook his head.  Wonderful eyes he had!  But the girl put out her hand.

“Of course, Derek; it’s Uncle Felix.”

They both smiled now, the girl friendly, the boy rather drawn back into himself.  And feeling strangely small and ill at ease, Felix murmured: 

“I’m going to see your father.  Can I give you a lift home?”

The answer came as he expected: 

“No, thanks.”  Then, as if to tone it down, the girl added: 

“We’ve got something to do first.  You’ll find him in the orchard.”

She had a ringing voice, full of warmth.  Lifting his hat, Felix passed on.  They were a couple!  Strange, attractive, almost frightening.  Kirsteen had brought his brother a formidable little brood.

Arriving at the cottage, he went up its mossy stones and through the wicket gate.  There was little change, indeed, since the days of Clara’s visit, save that the beehives had been moved farther out.  Nor did any one answer his knock; and mindful of the girl’s words, “You’ll find him in the orchard,” he made his way out among the trees.  The grass was long and starred with petals.  Felix wandered over it among bees busy with the apple-blossom.  At the very end he came on his brother, cutting down a pear-tree.  Tod was in shirt-sleeves, his brown arms bare almost to the shoulders.  How tremendous the fellow was!  What resounding and terrific blows he was dealing!  Down came the tree, and Tod drew his arm across his brow.  This great, burnt, curly-headed fellow was more splendid to look upon than even Felix had remembered, and so well built that not a movement of his limbs was heavy.  His cheek-bones were very broad and high; his brows thick and rather darker than his bright hair, so that his deep-set, very blue eyes seemed to look out of a thicket; his level white teeth gleamed from under his tawny moustache, and his brown, unshaven cheeks and jaw seemed covered with gold powder.  Catching sight of Felix, he came forward.

“Fancy,” he said, “old Gladstone spending his leisure cutting down trees—­of all melancholy jobs!”

Felix did not quite know what to answer, so he put his arm within his brother’s.  Tod drew him toward the tree.

“Sit down!” he said.  Then, looking sorrowfully at the pear-tree, he murmured: 

“Seventy years—­and down in seven minutes.  Now we shall burn it.  Well, it had to go.  This is the third year it’s had no blossom.”

His speech was slow, like that of a man accustomed to think aloud.  Felix admired him askance.  “I might live next door,” he thought, “for all the notice he’s taken of my turning up!”

“I came over in Stanley’s car,” he said.  “Met your two coming along—­fine couple they are!”

“Ah!” said Tod.  And there was something in the way he said it that was more than a mere declaration of pride or of affection.  Then he looked at Felix.