“There!” he said, lifting his head and showing an eager face lit by amorous eyes.  “Now you know how lovely you are to me!  I should like to kiss your mouth like that,—­for you have the sweetest mouth in the world!  And you have the prettiest hair,—­not raw gold which I hate,—­but soft brown, with delicious little sunbeams lost in it,—­and such a lot of it!  I’ve seen it all down, remember!  And your eyes would draw the heart out of any man and send him anywhere,—­yes, Innocent!—­anywhere,—­to Heaven or to Hell!”

She coloured a little.

“That’s beautiful talk!” she said,—­“It’s like poetry, but it isn’t true!”

“It is true!” he said, with fond insistence.  “And I’ll make you love me!”

“Ah, no!” A look of the coldest scorn suddenly passed over her features—­“that’s not possible.  You could never make me do anything!  And—­it’s rude of you to speak in such a way.  Please let go my hand!”

He dropped it instantly, and sprang erect.

“All right!  I’ll leave you to yourself,—­and Cupid!” Here he laughed rather bitterly.  “What made you give that bird such a name?”

“I found it in a book,” she answered,—­“It’s a name that was given to the god of Love when he was a little boy.”

“I know that!  Please don’t teach me my A.B.C.,” said Robin, half-sulkily.

She leaned back laughing, and singing softly: 

     “Love was once a little boy,
        Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho! 
      Then ’twas sweet with him to toy,
        Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho!”

Her eyes sparkled in the sun,—­a tress of her hair, ruffled by the hay, escaped and flew like a little web of sunbeams against her cheek.  He looked at her moodily.

“You might go on with the song,” he said,—­“’Love is now a little man—­’”

“‘And a very naughty one!’” she hummed, with a mischievous upward glance.

Despite his inward vexation, he smiled.

“Say what you like, Cupid is a ridiculous name for a dove,” he said.

“It rhymes to stupid,” she replied, demurely,—­“And the rhyme expresses the nature of the bird and—­the god!”

“Pooh!  You think that clever!”

“I don’t!  I never said a clever thing in my life.  I shouldn’t know how.  Everything clever has been written over and over again by people in books.”

“Hang books!” he exclaimed.  “It’s always books with you!  I wish we had never found that old chest of musty volumes in the panelled room.”

“Do you?  Then you are sillier than I thought you were.  The books taught me all I know,—­about love!”

“About love!  You don’t know what love means!” he declared, trampling the hay he stood upon with impatience.  “You read and read, and you get the queerest ideas into your head, and all the time the world goes on in ways that are quite different from what you are thinking about,—­and lovers walk through the fields and lanes everywhere near us every year, and you never appear to see them or to envy them—­”