“No—­and I’m not sure that I want to,” he answered, gaily.  “Dear Innocent, you must remember that I was at Oxford—­my dear old father and mother scraped and screwed every penny they could get to send me there—­and I believe I acquitted myself pretty well—­ but one of the best things I learned was the general uselessness and vanity of the fellows that called themselves ‘literary.’  They chiefly went in for disparaging and despising everyone who did not agree with them and think just as they did.  Mulish prigs, most of them!” and Robin laughed his gay and buoyant laugh once more—­ “They didn’t know that I was all the time comparing them with the honest type of farmer—­the man who lives an outdoor life with God’s air blowing upon him, and the soil turned freshly beneath him!—­I love books, too, in my way, but I love Nature better.”

“And do not poets help you to understand Nature?” asked Innocent.

“The best of them do—­such as Shakespeare and Keats and Tennyson, —­but they were of the past.  The modern men make you almost despise Nature,—­more’s the pity!  They are always studying themselves, and analysing themselves, and pitying themselves—­now I always say, the less of one’s self the better, in order to understand other people.”

Innocent’s eyes regarded him with quiet admiration.

“Yes, you are a thoroughly good boy,” she said—­“I have told you so often.  But—­I’m not sure that I should always get on with anyone as good as you are!”

She turned away then, and moved towards the house.  As she went, she suddenly stopped and clapped her hands, calling: 

“Cupid!  Cupid!  Cu-coo-pid!”

A flash of white wings glimmered in the sunset-light, and her pet dove flew to her, circling round and round till it dropped on her outstretched arm.  She caught it to her bosom, kissing its soft head tenderly, and murmuring playful words to it.  Robin watched her, as with this favourite bird-playmate she disappeared across the garden and into the house.  Then he gave a gesture half of despair, half of resignation—­and left the orchard.

The sun sank, and the evening shadows began to steal slowly in their long darkening lines over the quiet fields, and yet Farmer Jocelyn had not yet returned.  The women of the household grew anxious—­Priscilla went to the door many times, looking up the tortuous by-road for the first glimpse of the expected returning vehicle—­and Innocent stood in the garden near the porch, as watchful as a sentinel and as silent.  At last the sound of trotting hoofs was heard in the far distance, and Robin, suddenly making his appearance from the stable-yard where he too had been waiting, called cheerily,—­

“Uncle at last!  Here he comes!”

Another few minutes and the mare’s head turned the corner—­then the whole dog-cart came into view with Farmer Jocelyn driving it.  But he was quite alone.

Robin and Innocent exchanged surprised glances, but had no time to make any comment as old Hugo just then drove up and, throwing the reins to his nephew, alighted.