She settled her sunbonnet anew and trotted away,—­looking rather like a large spotted mushroom mysteriously set in motion and rolling, rather than walking, off the field.

When she was gone, Innocent sat down again upon the hay, this time without Cupid.  He had flown off to join his mates on the farmhouse gables.

“Dad is really not well,” she said, thoughtfully; “I feel anxious about him.  If he were to die,—­” At the mere thought her eyes filled with tears.  “He must die some day,” answered Robin, gently,—­“and he’s old,—­nigh on eighty.”

“Oh, I don’t want to remember that,” she murmured.  “It’s the cruellest part of life—­that people should grow old, and die, and pass away from us.  What should I do without Dad?  I should be all alone, with no one in the world to care what becomes of me.”

“I care!” he said, softly.

“Yes, you care—­just now”—­she answered, with a sigh; “and it’s very kind of you.  I wish I could care—­in the way you want me to—­ but—­”

“Will you try?” he pleaded.

“I do try—­really I do try hard,” she said, with quite a piteous earnestness,—­“but I can’t feel what isn’t here,”—­and she pressed both hands on her breast—­“I care more for Roger the horse, and Cupid the dove, than I do for you!  It’s quite awful of me—­but there it is!  I love—­I simply adore”—­and she threw out her arms with an embracing gesture—­“all the trees and plants and birds!—­ and everything about the farm and the farmhouse itself—­it’s just the sweetest home in the world!  There’s not a brick or a stone in it that I would not want to kiss if I had to leave it—­but I never felt that way for you!  And yet I like you very, very much, Robin!  —­I wish I could see you married to some nice girl, only I don’t know one really nice enough.”

“Nor do I!” he answered, with a laugh, “except yourself!  But never mind, dear!—­we won’t talk of it any more, just now at any rate.  I’m a patient sort of chap.  I can wait!”

“How long?” she queried, with a wondering glance.

“All my life!” he answered, simply.

A silence fell between them.  Some inward touch of embarrassment troubled the girl, for the colour came and went flatteringly in her soft cheeks and her eyes drooped under his fervent gaze.  The glowing light of the sky deepened, and the sun began to sink in a mist of bright orange, which was reflected over all the visible landscape with a warm and vivid glory.  That strange sense of beauty and mystery which thrills the air with the approach of evening, made all the simple pastoral scene a dream of incommunicable loveliness,—­and the two youthful figures, throned on their high dais of golden-green hay, might have passed for the rustic Adam and Eve of some newly created Eden.  They were both very quiet,—­with the tense quietness of hearts that are too full for speech.  A joy in the present was shadowed with a dim unconscious fear of the future in both their thoughts,—­though neither of them would have expressed their feelings in this regard one to the other.  A thrush warbled in a hedge close by, and the doves on the farmhouse gables spread their white wings to the late sunlight, cooing amorously.  And again the man spoke, with a gentle firmness: