He wondered why she did not move. As he came nearer he saw. Then he winked at me and came in. He tiptoed across the room to look at her. The sweet carelessness of her attitude, the appealing, half-pitiful girlishness of her face touched his responsive heart, and he leaned forward and kissed her cheek where already was a crimson stain of sunshine.
She roused half out of her sleep with a little, petulant “Oh!” as an awkward child. He sat down behind her, and gently drew her head against him, looking down at her with a tender, soothing smile. I thought she was going to fall asleep thus. But her eyelids quivered, and her eyes beneath them flickered into consciousness.
“Leslie! — oh! — Let me go!” she exclaimed, pushing him away. He loosed her, and rose, looking at her reproachfully. She shook her dress, and went quickly to the mirror to arrange her hair.
“You are mean!” she exclaimed, looking very flushed, vexed, and dishevelled.
He laughed indulgently, saying, “You shouldn’t go to sleep then and look so pretty. Who could help?”
“It is not nice!” she said, frowning with irritation.
“We are not ‘nice’— are we? I thought we were proud of our unconventionality. Why shouldn’t I kiss you?”
“Because it is a question of me, not of you alone.”
“Dear me, you are in a way!”
“Mother is coming.”
“Is she? You had better tell her.”
Mother was very fond of Leslie.
“Well, sir,” she said, “why are you frowning?”
He broke into a laugh.
“Lettie is scolding me for kissing her when she was playing ‘Sleeping Beauty’.”
“The conceit of the boy, to play Prince!” said my mother. “Oh, but it appears I was sadly out of character,” he said ruefully.
Lettie laughed and forgave him.
“Well,” he said, looking at her and smiling, “I came to ask you to go out.”
“It is a lovely afternoon,” said Mother.
She glanced at him, and said:
“I feel dreadfully lazy.”
“Never mind!” he replied, “you’ll wake up. Go and put your hat on.”
He sounded impatient. She looked at him.
He seemed to be smiling peculiarly.
She lowered her eyes and went out of the room.
“She’ll come all right,” he said to himself, and to me. “She likes to play you on a string.”
She must have heard him. When she came in again, drawing on her gloves, she said quietly:
“You come as well, Pat.”
He swung round and stared at her in angry amazement.
“I had rather stay and finish this sketch,” I said, feeling uncomfortable.
“No, but do come, there’s a dear.” She took the brush from my hand, and drew me from my chair. The blood flushed into his cheeks. He went quietly into the hall and brought my cap.
“All right!” he said angrily. “Women like to fancy themselves Napoleons.”
“They do, dear Iron Duke, they do,” she mocked.
“Yet, there’s a Waterloo in all their histories,” he said, since she had supplied him with the idea.
“Say Peterloo, my general, say Peterloo.”
“Ay, Peterloo,” he replied, with a splendid curl of the lip —“Easy conquests!”
“‘He came, he saw, he conquered,’” Lettie recited.
“Are you coming?” he said, getting more angry.
“When you bid me,” she replied, taking my arm.
We went through the wood, and through the dishevelled border-land to the high road, through the border-land that should have been park-like, but which was shaggy with loose grass and yellow mole-hills, ragged with gorse and bramble and briar, with wandering old thorn trees, and a queer clump of Scotch firs.
On the highway the leaves were falling, and they chattered under our steps. The water was mild and blue, and the corn stood drowsily in “stook”.
We climbed the hill behind Highclose, and walked on along the upland, looking across towards the hills of arid Derbyshire, and seeing them not, because it was autumn. We came in sight of the head-stocks of the pit at Selsby, and of the ugly village standing blank and naked on the brow of the hill.
Lettie was in very high spirits. She laughed and joked continually. She picked bunches of hips and stuck them in her dress. Having got a thorn in her finger from a spray of blackberries, she went to Leslie to have it squeezed out. We were all quite gay as we turned off the high road and went along the bridle path, with the woods on our right, the high Strelley hills shutting in our small valley in front, and the fields and the common to the left. About half-way down the lane we heard the slurr of the scythe-stone on the scythe. Lettie went to the hedge to see. It was George mowing the oats on the steep hillside where the machine could not go. His father was tying up the corn into sheaves.
Straightening his back, Mr Saxton saw us, and called to us to come and help. We pushed through a gap in the hedge and went up to him.
“Now then,” said the father to me, “take that coat off,” and to Lettie, “Have you brought us a drink? No; — come, that sounds bad! Going a walk I guess. You see what it is to get fat,” and he pulled a wry face as he bent over to tie the corn. He was a man beautifully ruddy and burly, in the prime of life.
“Show me, I’ll do some,” said Lettie.
“Nay,” he answered gently, “it would scratch your wrists and break your stays. Hark at my hands”— he rubbed them together —“like sandpaper!”
George had his back to us, and had not noticed us. He continued to mow. Leslie watched him.
“That’s a fine movement!” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” replied the father, rising very red in the face from the tying, “and our George enjoys a bit o’ mowing. It puts you in fine condition when you get over the first stiffness.”
We moved across to the standing corn. The sun being mild, George had thrown off his hat, and his black hair was moist and twisted into confused half-curls. Firmly planted, he swung with a beautiful rhythm from the waist. On the hip of his belted breeches hung the scythe-stone; his shirt, faded almost white, was torn just above the belt, and showed the muscles of his back playing like lights upon the white sand of a brook. There was something exceedingly attractive in the rhythmic body.
I spoke to him, and he turned round. He looked straight at Lettie with a flashing, betraying smile. He was remarkably handsome. He tried to say some words of greeting, then he bent down and gathered an armful of corn, and deliberately bound it up.
Like him, Lettie had found nothing to say. Leslie, however, remarked:
“I should think mowing is a nice exercise.”
“It is,” he replied, and continued, as Leslie picked up the scythe, “but it will make you sweat, and your hands will be sore.”
Leslie tossed his head a little, threw off his coat, and said briefly:
“How do you do it?” Without waiting for a reply he proceeded. George said nothing, but turned to Lettie.