And for the first time her eyes met his with a quaintly questioning look, which somehow carried in it a reminiscence of the stile and the ivy bush. Cissy's eyes were never quite (Hugh John has admitted as much to me in a moment of confidence)--never quite the same after the incident of the orchard. On this occasion Hugh John instantly averted his own, and looked stolidly at the ground.
"Perhaps Mr. Burnham has heard that you went with medicine and stuff to the gipsy camp," he said after a pause, trying to find an explanation of the apparently indefensible folly of his cricketing hero. Cissy had not thought of this before.
"Well, perhaps he had," she said, "but that was quite different."
"Well, that was only dogs and Billy Blythe," said Cissy, somewhat shamefacedly; "that doesn't count, and besides I like it. Doing good has got to be something you don't like--teaching little brats their duty to their godfathers and godmothers, or distributing tracts which only make people stamp and swear and carry on."
"Isn't there something somewhere about helping the fatherless and the widow?" faltered Hugh John. He hated "talking good," but somehow he felt that Cissy was doing herself less than justice.
"Well, I don't suppose that the fox-terrier's pa does much for him," she said gaily; "but come along and I'll 'interjuce' you to your ally Billy Blythe."
So they walked along towards the camp in silence. It was a still, Sunday-like evening, and the bell of Edam town steeple was tolling for the six o'clock stay of work, as it had done every night at the same hour for over five hundred years. The reek of the burgesses' supper-fires was going up in a hundred pillar-like "pews" of tall blue smoke. Homeward bound humble bees bumbled and blundered along, drunk and drowsy with the heady nectar they had taken on board--strayed revellers from the summer-day's Feast of Flowers. Delicate little blue butterflies rose flurriedly from the short grass, flirted with each other a while, and then mounted into a yet bluer sky in airy wheels and irresponsible balancings.
"This is my birthday!" suddenly burst out Hugh John.
Cissy stopped short and caught her breath.
"Oh no--it can't be;" she said, "I thought it was next week, and they aren't nearly ready."