ng.

... At midnight the girls had melted lead in an iron spoon, and dropped it
into buckets of water, amid bubbles of laughter, to see what the
occupations of their future husbands would be. They fished out the results
with eager faces, and twisted them to suit their hopes. Carette's piece
came out a something which Jeanne Falla at once pronounced an anchor, but
which young Torode said was a sword, and made it so by a skilful touch of
the finger.

... The air had been very still, as though asleep like all things else
except the sea. And the sea still lay like lead out there, but I began to
catch the gleam of white teeth along the sides of Brecqhou, and down below
in Havre Gosselin I could hear the long waves growling among the rocks. And
now there came a stir in the air like the waking breaths of a sleeper. The
shadows behind Herm and Jethou thickened and darkened. The little throb of
life behind the banks of cloud in the east quickened and grew. The sky
there looked thin and bright and empty, as if it had been swept bare and
cleansed for that which was to come. Up above me soft little gray clouds
showed suddenly, all touched with pink on their eastern sides, while the
sky behind them warmed with a faint dun glow. A cock in the Beaumanoir yard
woke suddenly and crowed, and the challenge was answered from La Vauroque.
Jeanne Falla's pigs grunted sleepily at the disturbance. The pigeons
rumbled in their cote, and the birds began to twitter in the trees about
the house. And behind the white curtains there, Carette lay sleeping.

... I had asked her, the first chance that offered, after I got back from
seeing George Hamon. We were spinning round in a double quickstep which
tried even Uncle Nico's seasoned arm.

"Carette," I whispered into the little pink shell of an ear, so near my
lips that it was hard to keep from kissing it, "will you ride with me
to-morrow?" and my heart went faster than my feet and set me tumbling over
them. For Midsummer Day is Riding Day in Sercq, and he who asks a maid to
share his horse that day is understood to desire her company on a longer
journey still, and her consent to the one is generally taken to mean that
she agrees to the other as well. So my little question held a mighty
meaning, and no wonder my heart went quicker than my feet and set me
stumbling over them as I waited for her answer.

"Not to-morrow, Phil," she whispered, and my heart stood still. Then it
went on its way like a w