The voice came from the boughs of a tall cherry-tree, where Adam had no difficulty in discerning a small blue-pinafored figure perched in a commodious position where the fruit was thickest.  Doubtless Totty was below, behind the screen of peas.  Yes—­with her bonnet hanging down her back, and her fat face, dreadfully smeared with red juice, turned up towards the cherry-tree, while she held her little round hole of a mouth and her red-stained pinafore to receive the promised downfall.  I am sorry to say, more than half the cherries that fell were hard and yellow instead of juicy and red; but Totty spent no time in useless regrets, and she was already sucking the third juiciest when Adam said, “There now, Totty, you’ve got your cherries.  Run into the house with ’em to Mother—­she wants you—­she’s in the dairy.  Run in this minute—­there’s a good little girl.”

He lifted her up in his strong arms and kissed her as he spoke, a ceremony which Totty regarded as a tiresome interruption to cherry-eating; and when he set her down she trotted off quite silently towards the house, sucking her cherries as she went along.

“Tommy, my lad, take care you’re not shot for a little thieving bird,” said Adam, as he walked on towards the currant-trees.

He could see there was a large basket at the end of the row:  Hetty would not be far off, and Adam already felt as if she were looking at him.  Yet when he turned the corner she was standing with her back towards him, and stooping to gather the low-hanging fruit.  Strange that she had not heard him coming!  Perhaps it was because she was making the leaves rustle.  She started when she became conscious that some one was near—­started so violently that she dropped the basin with the currants in it, and then, when she saw it was Adam, she turned from pale to deep red.  That blush made his heart beat with a new happiness.  Hetty had never blushed at seeing him before.

“I frightened you,” he said, with a delicious sense that it didn’t signify what he said, since Hetty seemed to feel as much as he did; “let me pick the currants up.”

That was soon done, for they had only fallen in a tangled mass on the grass-plot, and Adam, as he rose and gave her the basin again, looked straight into her eyes with the subdued tenderness that belongs to the first moments of hopeful love.

Hetty did not turn away her eyes; her blush had subsided, and she met his glance with a quiet sadness, which contented Adam because it was so unlike anything he had seen in her before.

“There’s not many more currants to get,” she said; “I shall soon ha’ done now.”

“I’ll help you,” said Adam; and he fetched the large basket, which was nearly full of currants, and set it close to them.