Laura.  ’Tis a grand life.  You’ll see it as I do one of these days.

Julia.  No, that I shall not.  Every day that I wake and hear the cattle lowing beneath my window I turn over on my pillow, and ’tis a heart of lead that turns with me.  The smell of the wild flowers in the fields calls me, but ’tis to the dairy I must go, to work.  And at noonday, when the shade of the woodland makes me thirsty for its coolness, ’tis the kitchen I must be in—­or picking green stuff for the market.  And so on till night, when the limbs of me can do no more and the spirit in me is like a bird with the wing of it broken.

Laura.  You’ll harden to it all by winter time right enough.

Julia.  O I’ll never harden to it.  ’Tis not that way I am made.  Some girls can set themselves down with four walls round them, and do their task nor ask for anything beyond, but ’tis not so with me.

Laura.  How is it then with you?

Julia. [Pointing.] There—­see that blue thing yonder flying from one blossom to another.  That’s how ’tis with me.  Shut me up close in one place, I perish.  Let me go free, and I can fly and live.

Laura.  You do talk a powerful lot of foolishness that no one could understand.

Julia.  O, do not let us talk at all.  Let us bide still, and get ourselves refreshed by the sweetness and the wildness of the forest.

Julia turns away and gives herself up to the enjoyment of the wood around her.

Laura arranges her ribbons and smoothes out her gown.  Neither of them speak for a few minutes.

Laura. [Looking up and pointing.] See those strange folk over there?  What are they?

Julia. [Looking in the same direction.] I know them.  They are gipsies from the hill near to us.

Laura.  They should be driven away then.  I don’t like such folk roosting around.

Julia.  But I do.  They are friends to me.  Many’s the time I have run out at dusk to speak with them as they sit round their fire.

Laura.  Then you didn’t ought to have done so.  Let’s get off now, before they come up.

Julia.  No, no.  Let us talk to them all. [Calling.] Tansie and Chris, come you here and sit down alongside of us. [Chris, Nat, and Tansie come up.

Chris. Good morning to you, mistress.  ’Tis a fine brave day, to-day.

Julia.  That it is, Chris. There never was so fine a day.  And we have come to spend all of it in this forest.

Tansie.  Ah, but ’tis warm upon the high road.

Nat.  We be come right away from the town, mistress.

Julia.  Then sit down, all of you, and we will talk in the cool shade.

Laura.  Not here, if you please.  I am not used to such company.