“You’re goin’ on too slow—­that’s it,” said Del critically.  “Why, when Captain Savage meandered along here with Jinny” (Virginia) “last week, afore we got as far as this he’d reeled off a heap of Byron and Jamieson” (Tennyson), “and sich; and only yesterday Jinny and Doctor Beveridge was blowin’ thistletops to know which was a flirt all along the trail past the crossroads.  Why, ye ain’t picked ez much as a single berry for Jinny, let alone Lad’s Love or Johnny Jumpups and Kissme’s, and ye keep talkin’ across me, you two, till I’m tired.  Now look here,” she burst out with sudden decision, “Jinny’s gone on ahead in a kind o’ huff; but I reckon she’s done that afore too, and you’ll find her, jest as Spinner did, on the rise of the hill, sittin’ on a pine stump and lookin’ like this.” (Here the youngest Miss Piper locked her fingers over her left knee, and drew it slightly up,—­with a sublime indifference to the exposure of considerable small-ankled red stocking,—­and with a far-off, plaintive stare, achieved a colorable imitation of her elder sister’s probable attitude.) “Then you jest go up softly, like as you was a bear, and clap your hands on her eyes, and say in a disguised voice like this” (here Del turned on a high falsetto beyond any masculine compass), “‘Who’s who?’ jest like in forfeits.”

“But she’ll be sure to know me,” said the surveyor timidly.

“She won’t,” said Del in scornful skepticism.

“I hardly think”—­stammered the young man, with an awkward smile, “that I—­in fact—­she’ll discover me—­before I can get beside her.”

“Not if you go softly, for she’ll be sittin’ back to the road, so—­gazing away, so”—­the youngest Miss Piper again stared dreamily in the distance, “and you’ll creep up just behind, like this.”

“But won’t she be angry?  I haven’t known her long—­that is—­don’t you see?” He stopped embarrassedly.

“Can’t hear a word you say,” said Del, shaking her head decisively.  “You’ve got my deaf ear.  Speak louder, or come closer.”

But here the instruction suddenly ended, once and for all time!  For whether the young man was seriously anxious to perfect himself; whether he was truly grateful to the young girl and tried to show it; whether he was emboldened by the childish appeal of the long brown distinguishing braid down her back, or whether he suddenly found something peculiarly provocative in the reddish brown eyes between their thickset hedge of lashes, and with the trim figure and piquant pose, and was seized with that hysteric desperation which sometimes attacks timidity itself, I cannot say!  Enough that he suddenly put his arm around her waist and his lips to her soft satin cheek, peppered and salted as it was by sun-freckles and mountain air, and received a sound box on the ear for his pains.  The incident was closed.  He did not repeat the experiment on either sister.  The disclosure of his rebuff seemed, however, to give a singular satisfaction to Red Gulch.