rse of quite another colour. An
awfully decent colour too. I'm glad you appreciate it. He's as brown
as a gipsy and not an ounce of flab about him. Charles Pixley is
mostly flab--"

"Don't be rude, Hen. You don't know Charles. And do drop your school
slang--"

"Can't, my child. It's part of my holiday, so none of your pi-jaw! If
you want me to enjoy myself you must let me have my head. You can't
imagine how awfully good it tastes when you've been doing your best to
choke girls off it for a year or two. It's one of the outward and
visible signs of emancipation. This is another!" and she sprang up the
high turf bank of the orchard of La Tour and danced a breakdown on it,
and then jumped back into the road with ballooning skirts, to the
intense amazement of old Mrs. Hamon of Le Fort, who had just come
round the corner to draw sweet water from the La Tour well.

"People will think you're crazy," remonstrated Margaret.

"So I am, and you're my keeper, though it's supposed to be the other
way about. The air of Sark has got into my head. What a quaint bonnet
that old lady has! I wonder what colour it was in its infancy.
Good-morning, ma'am! Isn't this a glorious day?" And old Madame Hamon
murmured a word and passed hastily on lest worse should befall.

"Hennie, be sensible for a minute or two. I want you to consider
something seriously."

"Sensible, if you like, Chummie, for 'tis my nature to.
Serious?--Never! How could one, with those larks bursting themselves
in a sky like that? And did you ever see hedges like these in all your
life? What's it all about?--Ripply-Hair?"

"Yes. Don't you see how awkward the whole matter is--"

"Awkward for Charles Pixley maybe. I don't see that anybody else need
worry themselves thin about it."

"I'm not thinking of Mr. Pixley. It's--"

"Ripply-Hair? Well, that's all right! Jolly sight nicer to think about
him. I like his eyes too. There's something in them that seems to
invite one's confidence. Perhaps you haven't noticed it? If I had a
father-confessor--which, thank's-be, I haven't, and a jolly good thing
for him!--I should stipulate for him having eyes just like that.
Ripply hair too, I think. Yes. I should insist on his having hair just
like Mr. Graeme's."

They had strolled along past Le Fort till the road lost itself in a
field above Banquette, and there they came to an involuntary stand and
stood gazing.

Before them, the long, broken slopes of the Eperquerie swept down