sharpness in Juliana's "What!" "They want to be off and over the edge of things, but they don't dare—haven't the nerve. You'd like to, but you don't dare. You know you don't!"

Juliana almost smiled. The fellow's face, as she paused beside him at the stile, was set with sheer impudence, yet this was not wholly unattractive. And amazingly he now broke into verse:

We, too, shall steal upon the spring

With amber sails flown wide;

Shall drop, some day, behind the moon,

Borne on a star-blue tide.

He indicated the present moon with flourishing grace as he named it. Juliana did not gasp, but it might have been a gasp in one less than a Whipple. But the troubadour was not to be daunted. Juliana didn't know Dave Cowan as cities knew him.

Enchanted ports we, too, shall touch;

Cadiz or Cameroon;

Nor other pilot need beside

A magic wisp of moon.

Again he gracefully indicated our lunar satellite, and again Juliana nearly gasped.

"Of course, you felt it all, watching those people. I don't blame you for feeling wild."

Juliana lifted one of her stout tan boots toward the stile, and Dave with doffed cap extended a hand to assist her through. Juliana, dazed beyond a Whipple calm for almost the first time in her thirty years, found her own hand perforce upon his.

"You poor thing!" concluded Dave with a swift glance to the ridge where the children had not yet appeared.

Then amazingly he enfolded the figure of the woman in his arms and upon her cold, appalled lips he imprinted a swift but accurate kiss.

"There, poor thing!" he murmured.

He lavished one look upon the still frozen Juliana, replaced the cap upon his yellow hair, once more preened his moustache at her, and turned away to meet the oncoming children. And in his glance Juliana retained still the wit to read a gay, cherishing pity. As he turned away she sank limply against the fence, her   

 Prev. P 83/298 next