“Ay!  What is it?”

“Are you coming along with us?”

Uncle Hugo shook his head despondently.

“Why not?  It’s the last load this year!”

“Ay!” He lifted his straw hat and waved it in a kind of farewell salute towards the waggon, repeating mechanically:  “The last load!  The very last!”

Then there came a cessation of movement everywhere for the moment.  It was a kind of breathing pause in Nature’s everlasting chorus,—­ a sudden rest, as it seemed, in the very spaces of the air.  The young man threw himself down on the hay-load so that he faced the girl, who sat quiet, caressing the dove she held.  He was undeniably good-looking, with an open nobility of feature which is uncommon enough among well-born and carefully-nurtured specimens of the human race, and is perhaps still more rarely to be found among those whose lot in life is one of continuous hard manual labour.  Just now he looked singularly attractive, the more so, perhaps, because he was unconscious of it.  He stretched out one hand towards the girl and touched the hem of her white frock.

“Are you feeling kind?”

Her eyes lightened with a gleam of merriment.

“I am always kind.”

“Not to me!  Not as kind as you are to that bird.”

“Oh, poor Cupid!  You’re jealous of him!”

He moved a little nearer to her.

“Perhaps I am!” And he spoke in a lower tone.  “Perhaps I am, Innocent!  I grudge him the privilege of lying there on your dear little white breast!  I am envious when you kiss him!  I want you to kiss me!”

His voice was tremulous,—­he turned up his face audaciously.

She looked at him with a smile.

“I will if you like!” she said.  “I should think no more of kissing you than of kissing Cupid!”

He drew back with a gesture of annoyance.

“I wouldn’t be kissed at all that way,” he said, hotly.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not the right way.  A bird is not a man!”

She laughed merrily.

“Nor a man a bird, though he may have a bird’s name!” she said.  “Oh, Robin, how clever you are!”

He leaned closer.

“Let Cupid go!” he pleaded,—­“I want to ride home on the last load with you alone.”

Another little peal of laughter escaped her.

“I declare you think Cupid an actual person!” she said.  “If he’ll go, he shall.  But I think he’ll stay.”

She loosened her hold of the dove, which, released, gravely hopped up to her shoulder and sat there pruning its wing.  She glanced round at it.

“I told you so!” she said,—­“He’s a fixture.”

“I don’t mind him so much up there,” said Robin, and he ventured to take one of her hands in his own,—­“but he always has so much of you; he nestles under your chin and is caressed by your sweet lips,—­he has all, and I have,—­nothing!”

“You have one hand,” said Innocent, with demure gravity.