Martha looked despairingly round, as if to see that help was nigh. They were not alone in the forest. This hill side at the top of the rocky walk was a favourite resort. There were stalls for toys and stalls for refreshments close at hand. There were half-a-dozen groups of idle people enjoying themselves under the tall pines and in the shadow of the big blue-gray rocks. The mother of one estimable family had taken off her boots, and was lying at full length, with her stockings exposed to the libertine gaze of passers-by. Some were eating, some were sleeping. Children with cropped heads, short petticoats, and a great deal of stocking, were flying gaudy-coloured air-balls, and screaming at each other as only French children can scream. There was not the stillness of a dense primeval wood, the awful solitude of the Great Dismal Swamp. The place was rather like a bit of Greenwich Park or Hampstead Heath on a comparatively quiet afternoon in the middle of the week. Miss Dibb took heart of grace, and decided that her watch and earrings were safe. It was only her character that was likely to suffer. Daphne was dancing about among the rocks all this time, spreading a damask napkin on a smooth slab of granite, and making the most of the dinner. Her red stockings flashed to and fro like fireflies. She had a scarlet ribbon round her neck, and the dark serge gown was laced up the back with a scarlet cord, and, with her feathery hair flying loose and glittering in the sun, she was as bright a figure as ever lit up the foreground of a forest scene. The unknown forgot to be useful, and sat on his granite bench lazily contemplating her as she completed her preparations. ‘What an idle person you are!’ she exclaimed, looking up from her task. ‘Tumbler!’ He explored the basket and produced the required article. ‘Thanks. Corkscrew! Don’t run away with the idea that you are going to have wine. The corkscrew is for our lemonade.’ ‘You needn’t put such a selfish emphasis on the possessive pronoun,’ said the stranger. ‘I mean to have some of that lemonade.’ Daphne surveyed the banquet critically, with her head on one side. It was not a stupendous meal for two hungry school-girls and an unknown pedestrian, whom Daphne supposed to have been on short commons for the last week or two. There was half a roasted fowl—a fowl who in his zenith had no claim to be considered a fine specimen, and who seemed to have fallen upon evil days before he was sacrificed, so gaunt was his leg, so shrunken his wing, so withered his breast; there were some thin slices of carmine ham, with a bread-crumby edge instead of fat. Of one thing there was abundance, and that was the staff of life. Two long brown loaves—the genuine _pain de ménage_—suggested a homely kind of plenty. For dessert there was a basket of wood-strawberries, a thin slab of Gruyère, and some small specimens of high-art confectionery, more attractive to the eye than the palate.