Part 49 (1/2)

At all events Christopher soon found grounds for no immediate fear and left the future to itself.

”Shall we go on?” he suggested, marking how her hands grew white as she pressed them together.

She negatived the proposal, imperiously saying they had only just got there and she wanted to rest.

”You are getting lazy, Patricia,” said her lover gravely. ”I warn you, it's the one unpardonable sin in my eyes.”

”You mistake restlessness for energy,” she retorted quickly. ”I'm never lazy. Ask Christopher.”

Geoffry did no such thing. He continued to fling stones at a mark on the lower lip of the chalk pit.

”It's fairly hard to distinguish, anyhow,” said Christopher, thoughtfully. ”There are people who call Nevil lazy, whereas he isn't.

He only takes all his leisure in one draught.”

”Oh, I don't know. It's simple enough, isn't it? I never feel lazy so long as I'm doing something--moving about.”

Geoffry jumped down into the little white pit as he spoke, as if to demonstrate his remark. Patricia looked scornful.

”So long as your are restless, you mean,” she said.

”Well, you must teach me better if you can. I say, Patricia, do you always turn reproof on the reprover's head?”

He leant against the bank looking up at her, smiling in his easy, good-tempered way. He wished vaguely the line of frown on her pretty forehead would go. He wondered if she had a headache.

He ventured to put his hand over hers when he was sure Christopher was not looking. She neither answered the caress nor resented it.

Presently he began to explore the hollow, poking into all the rabbit-holes with his stick.

Christopher sat silent, which was a mistake, for it left her irritation but one object on which to expend itself, and after all it was Geoffry who should have tried to please her by sitting still.

Suddenly a frightened rabbit burst out of a disturbed hole, and Geoffry, with a shout of delight, in pure instinct flung a stone. By a strange, unhappy fluke, expected least of all by himself, the stone hit the poor little terrified thing and it rolled over dead. He picked it up by its ears and called to them triumphantly to witness his luck, with boyish delight in the unexpected, though the chances were he would never have flung the stone at all had he dreamt of destroying it.

A second flint whizzed through the air, grazing the side of his head.

He dropped the rabbit and stood staring blankly at the two on the bank.

Patricia's white, furious face blazed on him. Christopher was grasping her hands, his face hardly less white.

”Are you hurt?” he called over his shoulder.

”No,” the other stammered out, unaware of the blood streaming down the side of his head, and then dabbed his handkerchief on it. ”It's only a scratch. What's happened?”

”Patricia mistook you for a rabbit, I think,” returned Christopher grimly and added to her in a low voice, ”Do you know you struck him, Patricia?”

She gave a s.h.i.+ver and put her hands to her face. Even then he did not leave go of her wrists.

”A happy fluke you didn't aim so well as I did,” called Geoffry, unsteadily coming towards them.

”Don't come,” said Christopher sharply. ”Wait a moment. Patricia,” he tried to pull her hands from her face: her golden head dropped against his shoulder and he put his arms round her.