.

they might if they wo'ld." Ah, Miss Marty, was it only the edge of the morning that heightened the rose on your cheek by a little--a very little--as the sky paled?
And now the kingfishers were awake, and the woodlands nigh, and the tide began to gather force as it neared the narrower winding channel.
To enter this they skirted a mud-flat, where the day, breaking over the tree-tops and through the river mists, shone on scores upon scores of birds gathered to await it--curlews, sandpipers, gulls in rows like strings of jewels, here and there a heron standing sentry.
The assembly paid no heed to the passing boat.
Miss Marty gazed up at the last star fading in the blue.

How clear the morning was! How freshly scented beneath the shadow of the woods! Her gaze descended upon the incongruous top-hat and gold-laced livery of Scipio, touched with the morning sunshine.
She glanced around her and motioned to Cai Tamblyn to bring the boat to shore by a grassy spit whence (as she knew) a cart-track led alongshore through the young oak coppices to the village.
"And Scipio," she said, turning as she stepped out on the turf, "will like a run in the woods." She had walked on, maybe a hundred paces, before the absurdity of it struck her.

She had been thinking of Mr.Pope's line: "When wild in woods the noble savage ran." And at the notion of Scipio, in gilt-laced hat and livery, tearing wildly through the undergrowth in the joy of liberty, she halted and laughed aloud.
She was smiling yet when, at a turning of the leafy lane, she came upon the prettiest innocent sight.

On a cushion 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.