What makes you ask?"
"Because I used to know a Johnny Fortnight that wore one in these
parts; and I thought it might be he, belike."
"Jim had a greater gift o' speech than you can make pretence to," said
the woman abruptly. "I often wonder that of two twin-brothers one
should be so glib and t'other so mum-chance."
"'Tis the Lord's ways," the man answered, resting on his oars. "Will
you be dabblin' your feet as usual, Sarah?"
"Why not?"
He turned the boat's nose to a small landing-place cut in the solid
rock, where a straight pathway dived between hazel-bushes and appeared
again twenty feet above, winding inland around the knap of a green
hill. Here he helped her to disembark, and waited with his back to
the shore. The spinster behind the hazel screen pulled off shoes and
stockings, and paddled about for a minute in the dewy grass that
fringed the meadow's lower slope. Then, drawing a saucer from her
reticule, she wrung some dew into it and bathed her face. Ten minutes
later she re-appeared on the river's bank.
"A happy May, John!"
"A happy May to _you_, Sarah!"
John stepped out beside her, and making his boat fast, followed her
up the narrow path and around the shoulder of the steep meadow.
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