r."

"It's Daisy. She'll go fast. Isn't she beautiful! She's rubbing her nose
on me. I wish I could ride her."

"She might let you--for half a minute. Charlie's the boy for you. Come
and see what's in the harness-room."

"Not now. There isn't time."

"Wait for me then." There was pleading in his voice. "Wait in the wood.
I've something to show you. Will you do that for me?"

He was standing close to her, and she did not look up. "I ought to go
back, but I don't want to. I don't like ill people. They sicken me."

"Don't go, then."

Now she looked at him in search of the assurance she wanted. "I needn't,
need I? Helen can manage, can't she?"

He forgot to answer because she was like a flower suddenly brought to
life in Daisy's stall, a flower for grace and beauty, but a woman for
something that made him deaf to what she said.

"She can manage, can't she?"

"Of course." He snatched an armful of hay from a rack and led her to the
larch trees and there he scraped together the fallen needles and laid
the hay on them to make a bed for her.

"Rest there. Go to sleep and I'll be back before you wake."

She lay curled on her side until all sounds of him had passed and then
she rolled on to her back and drew up her knees. It was dark and warm in
the little wood; the straight trunks of the larches were as menacing as
spears and the sky looked like a great banner tattered by their points.
Though she lay still, she seemed to be marching with a host, and the
light wind in the trees was the music of its going, the riven banner was
a trophy carried proudly and, at a little distance, the rushing of the
brook was the sound of feet following behind. For a long time she went
with that triumphant army, but at length there came other sounds that
forced themselves on her hearing and changed her from a gallant soldier
to a girl half frightened in a wood.

She sat up and listened to the galloping of a horse and a voice singing
in gay snatches. The sounds rose and sank and died away and came forth
lustily again, and in the singing there was something full-blooded and
urgent, as though the singer came from some danger joyfully escaped or
hurried to some tryst. She stood up and, holding to a tree, she leaned
sideways to listen. She heard Halkett speaking jovially to the mare as
he pulled her up on the cobbles and gave her a parting smack of his open
hand: then there began a sweet whistling invaded by other sounds, by
Daisy's stampin