n the
wrist. And then he began looking for a new place, but before he could
make up his mind Jane had taken her hand and herself away, saying "Good
night" very politely as she went. So he lay down to dream that for the
first time in his life he had made up his mind. But Jane, whose mind
was always made up, for the first time in her life dreamed otherwise.

It happened that by some imprudence Martin had laid himself down
exactly under the gap in the hedge, and when Old Gillman came along the
other side crying "Maids!" in the morning, the careless fellow had no
time to retreat across the open to safe cover; so there was nothing for
it but to conceal himself under the very nose of danger and roll into
the ditch. Which he hurriedly did, while the milkmaids ran here and
there like yellow chickens frightened by a hawk. Not knowing what else
to do, they at last clustered above him about the gap, filling it so
with their pretty faces that the farmer found room for not so much as
an eyelash when he arrived with his bread. And it was for all the world
as though the hedge, forgetting it was autumn, had broken out at that
particular spot into pink-and-white may. So that even Old Gillman had
no fault to find with the arrangement.

"All astir, my maids?" said he.

"Yes, master, yes!" they answered breathlessly; all but Joscelyn, who
cried, "Oh! oh! oh!" and bit her lip hard, and stood suddenly on one
foot.

"What's amiss with ye?" asked Gillman.

"Nothing, master," said she, very red in the face. "A nettle stung my
ankle."

"Well, I'd not weep for t," said Gillman.

"Indeed I'm not weeping!" cried Joscelyn loudly.

"Then it did but tickle ye, I doubt," said Gillman slyly, "to
blushing-point."

"Master, I AM not blushing!" protested Joscelyn. "The sun's on my face
and in my eyes, don't you see?"

"I would he were on my daughter's, then," said Gillman. "Does Gillian
still sit in her own shadow?"

"Yes, master," answered Jane, "but I think she will be in the light
very shortly."

"If she be not," groaned Gillman, "it's a shadow she'll find instead of
a father when she comes back to the farmstead; for who can sow wild
oats at my time o' life, and not show it at last in his frame? Yet I
was a stout man once."

"Take heart, master," urged Joyce eyeing his waistcoat. But he shook
his head.

"Don't be deceived, maid. Drink makes neither flesh nor gristle; only
inflation. Gillian!" he shouted, "when will ye make the b