Clara.  That is the song I was thinking of, Jessie.

George.  Can you go on with it, Miss Jessie.

Jessie.  I can’t say any more.

Clara. [Gently singing or speaking.]

I overheard my own true love,
Her voice it was so clear. 
“Long time I have been waiting for
The coming of my dear.”

George. [Heaving a sigh.] That’s it.

Jessie.  Go on, Joan, I do like the sound of it.

Clara.  Shall I go on with the song, George?

George.  As you please.

Clara.

“Sometimes I am uneasy
And troubled in my mind,
Sometimes I think I’ll go to my love
And tell to him my mind.”

“And if I would go to my love
My love he will say nay
If I show to him my boldness
He’ll ne’er love me again.”

Jessie.  When her love was hid a-hind of the bushes and did hear her a-singing so pitiful, what did he do then?

Clara.  I don’t know, Jessie.

Jessie.  I reckon as he did come out to show her as he knowed all what she did keep in her mind.

Clara.  Very likely the briars were so thick between them, Jess, that he never got to the other side for her to tell him.

George.  Yes, that’s how ’twas, I count.

Jessie. [Running up to Robin.] I’m going to look at your book along of you, Robin.

Robin.  But I’m the one to turn the leaves, remember. [The children sit side by side looking at the picture book.  Clara sews.  George goes on with the potatoes.  As the last one is finished and tossed into the water, he looks at Clara for the first time.  A long silence.

George.  Miss Clara and me was good friends once on a time.

Clara.  Tell me how it was then, George.

George.  I did used to put her on the horse’s back, and we would go down to the water trough in the evening time and —

Clara.  What else did you and Miss Clara do together, George?

George.  Us would walk in the woods aside of one another—­And I would lift she to a high branch in a tree—­and pretend for to leave her there.

Clara.  And then?

George.  Her would call upon me pitiful—­and I would come back from where I was hid.

Clara.  And did her crying cease?

George.  She would take and spring as though her was one of they little wild squirrels as do dance about in the trees.

Clara.  Where would she spring to, George?

George.  I would hold out my two arms wide to her, and catch she.

Clara.  And did she never fall, whilst springing from the tree,
George?

George.  I never let she fall, nor get hurted by naught so long as her was in the care of me.