he bank looking up at her, smiling in his easy,
good-tempered way. He wished vaguely the line of frown on her pretty
forehead would go. He wondered if she had a headache.

He ventured to put his hand over hers when he was sure Christopher was
not looking. She neither answered the caress nor resented it.

Presently he began to explore the hollow, poking into all the
rabbit-holes with his stick.

Christopher sat silent, which was a mistake, for it left her
irritation but one object on which to expend itself, and after all it
was Geoffry who should have tried to please her by sitting still.

Suddenly a frightened rabbit burst out of a disturbed hole, and
Geoffry, with a shout of delight, in pure instinct flung a stone. By a
strange, unhappy fluke, expected least of all by himself, the stone
hit the poor little terrified thing and it rolled over dead. He picked
it up by its ears and called to them triumphantly to witness his luck,
with boyish delight in the unexpected, though the chances were he
would never have flung the stone at all had he dreamt of destroying
it.

A second flint whizzed through the air, grazing the side of his head.
He dropped the rabbit and stood staring blankly at the two on the
bank.

Patricia's white, furious face blazed on him. Christopher was grasping
her hands, his face hardly less white.

"Are you hurt?" he called over his shoulder.

"No," the other stammered out, unaware of the blood streaming down the
side of his head, and then dabbed his handkerchief on it. "It's only a
scratch. What's happened?"

"Patricia mistook you for a rabbit, I think," returned Christopher
grimly and added to her in a low voice, "Do you know you struck him,
Patricia?"

She gave a shiver and put her hands to her face. Even then he did not
leave go of her wrists.

"A happy fluke you didn't aim so well as I did," called Geoffry,
unsteadily coming towards them.

"Don't come," said Christopher sharply. "Wait a moment. Patricia," he
tried to pull her hands from her face: her golden head dropped against
his shoulder and he put his arms round her.

"What is the matter with Patricia. Is she ill?" asked Geoffry at his
shoulder, his voice altered and strained.

"It's all right now. Sorry I wasn't quicker, Geoffry. Don't touch her
yet."

But Geoffry was hard pressed already not to thrust the other aside,
and he laid his hand on the girl's arm. Christopher never offered to
move.

"Patricia, what's the matter.