Here she made a grimace, drawing her mouth down into the elongated frown of the famous Florentine, with such an irresistibly comic effect that Adderley gave way to a peal of hearty, almost boyish laughter.

“That’s right!” said Cicely approvingly—­“That’s you, you know!  It’s natural to laugh at your age—­you’re only about six or seven-and-twenty, aren’t you?”

“I shall be twenty-seven in August,”—­he said with a swift return to solemnity—­“That is, as you will admit, getting on towards thirty.”

“Oh, nonsense!  Everybody’s getting on towards thirty, of course—­or towards sixty, or towards a hundred.  I shall be fifteen in October, but ‘you will admit’”—­here she mimicked his voice and accent—­“that I am getting on towards a hundred.  Some folks think I’ve turned that already, and that I’m entering my second century, I talk so ‘old.’  But my talk is nothing to what I feel—­I feel—­oh!” and she gave a kind of angular writhe to her whole figure—­“like twenty Methusalehs in one girl!”

“You are an original!”—­said Julian, nodding at her with an air of superior wisdom—­“That’s what you are!”

“Like you, Sir Moon-Calf”—­said Cicely—­“The word ‘moon-calf,’ you know, stands for poet—­it means a human calf that grazes on the moon.  Naturally the animal never gets fat,—­nor will you; it always looks odd—­and so will you; it never does anything useful,—­nor will you; and it puts a kind of lunar crust over itself, under which crust it writes verses.  When you break through, its crust you find something like a man, half-asleep—­not knowing whether he’s man or boy, and uncertain, whether to laugh or be serious till some girl pokes fun at him—­and then—–­”

“And then?”—­laughed Adderley, entering vivaciously into her humour--"What next?”

“This, next!”—­and Cicely pelted him full in the face with one of her velvety cowslip-bunches—­’And this,—­catch me if you can!”

Away she flew over the grass, with Adderley after her.  Through tall buttercups and field daisies they raced each other like children,—­ startling astonished bees from repasts in clover-cups—­and shaking butterflies away from their amours on the starwort and celandines.  The private gate leading into Abbot’s Manor garden stood open,—­ Cicely rushed in, and shut it against her pursuer who reached it almost at the same instant.

“Too bad!” he cried laughingly—­“You mustn’t keep me out!  I’m bound to come inside!”

“Why?” demanded Cicely, breathless with her run, but looking all the better for the colour in her cheeks and the light in her eyes—­“I don’t see the line of argument at all.  Your hair is simply dreadful!  You look like Pan, heated in the pursuit of a coy nymph of Delphos.  If you only wore skins and a pair of hoofs, the resemblance would be perfect!”

“My dear Cicely!” said a dulcet voice at this moment,—­“Where have you been all the morning!  How do you do, Mr. Adderley?  Won’t you come in?”