on of moss beside the
path, two small children--a boy and a girl--lay fast asleep.
The boy's arm was flung around his sister's shoulders, and across his
thighs rested a wand or thin pole topped with a May-garland of wild
hyacinths, red-robin and painted birds' eggs. A tin cup, brought to
collect pence for the garland, glittered in the cart-rut at their
feet. It had rolled down the mossy bank as the girl's fingers
relaxed in sleep.

They were two little ones of Troy, strayed hither from the
merrymaking; and at first Miss Marty had a mind to wake them, seeing
how near they lay to the river's brink. But noting that a fallen log
safeguarded them from this peril, she fumbled for the pocket beneath
her skirt, dropped a sixpence with as little noise as might be into
the tin cup, and tiptoed upon her way.

About three hundred yards from the village she met another pair of
children; and, soon after, a score or so in a cluster, who took toll
of her in pence; for almost everyone carried a garland. And then the
trees opened, and she saw before her the village with its cottages,
grey and whitewashed, its gardens and orchards, mirrored in the
brimming tide, all trembling in the morning light and yet exquisitely
still. Far up the river, beyond the village and the bridge, a level
green meadow ran out, narrowing the channel; and here beneath the
apple-trees--for the meadow was half an orchard--had been set out
many lines of white-covered tables, at which the Mayers made
innocently merry.

Innocently, did I say? Well, I have known up-country folk before
now to be scandalised by some things which we in the Duchy think
innocent enough. So let me admit that the three long-boats conveyed
something more than the youth and beauty of Troy to that morning's
Maying; that when launched from Mr. Runnells' yard they were not
entirely what they seemed: that from their trial spin across the bay
they returned some inches deeper in the water, and yet they did not
leak. Had you perchance been standing by the shore in the half-light
as they came up over the shallows, you might have wondered at the
number of times they took ground, and at the slowness of the tide to
lift and float them. You might have wondered again why, after they
emerged from the deep shadow of Sir Felix Felix-Williams' woods upon
the southern shore, albeit in shallow water, they seemed to feel
their hindrances no longer.

Have you ever, my reader, caught hold of a lizard