"That's well. If you and he are seen together there'll be hell," he cried savagely. "You're mine, blood and flesh, and all that's in you, and I'll have you or die for it, and I'd kill the man who tried to get you away from me, as I'd kill you if you played me false and ran off to any one else. You young devil, you--you're as full of blood as a whort is full of juice." While speaking he was half dragging her towards the ruined miner's cot, and there flung her savagely on the fern. * * * * * Much lower down, where the Tavy fretted less, being freer from rocks; where there were trees, and a shelter from the wind, and flowers also in their season, honeysuckles and rose-bays, with fern in great abundance--there could be no fairyland without ferns--and green water oozing from the banks, and a fragrant kind of mist over it all; there, where the river slanted perceptibly towards the lowland, "more down under like," as Peter would have expressed it, two little people were trying to strangle one another with pure affection. They were not pixy-folk. They were only Boodles and her boy going on with the story. They would have been out of place upon the high Tavy, on the rock-strewn side of the cleave, among the ruins of the mines. There was nothing hard or fierce about them. They were children, to be treated with tenderness; kept out of the strong wind; put among the flowers where they could roll and tumble without hurting themselves; wrapped in the clinging mist full of that odour of sweet water and fresh foliage which cannot quickly be forgotten when it has been enjoyed. "I thought I was not going to see you any more," said Boodles with a fine indifference. "Should you have cared very much, sweetheart?" "Not a bit, really. A girl mustn't expect too much from a sailor boy. They are fickle, and keep a sweetheart at every place they stop at. Girls at every port. Red, white, and yellow girls. A whole heap of them!" "But only one all the time," said Aubrey. "One best beautiful girl who makes all the others seem nothing, and that's always the girl he leaves at home and comes back to. You were always in my thoughts, darling." "But you never wrote," murmured she. "I promised mother I wouldn't," he said, with a little hesitation. "Then she does know," cried Boodles quickly. "Well, I think she ought to, because we can't go on being so chummy--" "Lovers," he amended. "No, we can't," she said decidedly. "Your people must know all about it, and like me, and tell me I'm nice enough, if we are going on in the same old way. You see, boy, I had got used to the idea of doing without you, and I don't want to start again, and then your people to say I'm not nice enough. We are growing up now. I'm in long frocks, and--and at our age things begin to get serious," went on the seventeen-year-old girl of the radiant head somewhat dolefully, as if she was rather afraid she was past her prime.