On one side of it was a stone wall, on two others a tall hedge, but the side next her sloped down to the road, unfenced.
Joyce, with her hands filled with the yellow wild flowers, stood looking around her, singing the old rhyme, the song that she had taught the baby to sing before he could talk plainly: "Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn, The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
Little Blue Blue, oh, where are you?
Oh, where are you-u-u-u ?" The gay little voice that had been rising higher and higher, sweet as any bird's, stopped suddenly in mid-air; for, as if in answer to her call, there was a rustling just ahead of her, and a boy who had been lying on his back, looking at the sky, slowly raised himself out of the grass.
For an instant Joyce was startled; then seeing by his wooden shoes and old blue cotton blouse that he was only a little peasant watching the goats, she smiled at him with a pleasant good morning.
He did not answer, but came towards her with a dazed expression on his face, as if he were groping his way through some strange dream.

"It is time to go in!" he exclaimed, as if repeating some lesson learned long ago, and half forgotten.
Joyce stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment.

The little fellow had spoken in English.

"Oh, you must be Jules," she cried.

"Aren't you?
I've been wanting to find you for ever so long." [Illustration: "HE CAME TOWARDS HER WITH A DAZED EXPRESSION ON HIS FACE."] The boy seemed frightened, and did not answer, only looked at her with big, troubled eyes.