"It is true!" he said, with fond insistence. "And I'll MAKE you love me!" "Ah, no!" A look of the coldest scorn suddenly passed over her features--"that's not possible. You could never MAKE me do anything! And--it's rude of you to speak in such a way. Please let go my hand!" He dropped it instantly, and sprang erect. "All right! I'll leave you to yourself,--and Cupid!" Here he laughed rather bitterly. "What made you give that bird such a name?" "I found it in a book," she answered,--"It's a name that was given to the god of Love when he was a little boy." "I know that! Please don't teach me my A.B.C.," said Robin, half-sulkily. She leaned back laughing, and singing softly: "Love was once a little boy, Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho! Then 'twas sweet with him to toy, Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho!" Her eyes sparkled in the sun,--a tress of her hair, ruffled by the hay, escaped and flew like a little web of sunbeams against her cheek. He looked at her moodily. "You might go on with the song," he said,--"'Love is now a little man--'" "'And a very naughty one!'" she hummed, with a mischievous upward glance. Despite his inward vexation, he smiled. "Say what you like, Cupid is a ridiculous name for a dove," he said. "It rhymes to stupid," she replied, demurely,--"And the rhyme expresses the nature of the bird and--the god!" "Pooh! You think that clever!" "I don't! I never said a clever thing in my life. I shouldn't know how. Everything clever has been written over and over again by people in books." "Hang books!" he exclaimed. "It's always books with you! I wish we had never found that old chest of musty volumes in the panelled room." "Do you? Then you are sillier than I thought you were. The books taught me all I know,--about love!" "About love! You don't know what love means!" he declared, trampling the hay he stood upon with impatience. "You read and read, and you get the queerest ideas into your head, and all the time the world goes on in ways that are quite different from what YOU are thinking about,--and lovers walk through the fields and lanes everywhere near us every year, and you never appear to see them or to envy them--" "Envy them!" The girl opened her eyes wide. "Envy them! Oh, Cupid, hear! Envy them! Why should I envy them? Who could envy Mr. and Mrs. Pettigrew?" "What nonsense you talk!" he exclaimed,--"Mr. and Mrs. Pettigrew are married folk, not lovers!" "But they were lovers once," she said,--"and only three years ago. I remember them, walking through the lanes and fields as you say, with arms round each other,--and Mrs. Pettigrew's hands were always dreadfully red, and Mr. Pettigrew's fingers were always dirty,--and they married very quickly,--and now they've got two dreadful babies that scream all day and all night, and Mrs. Pettigrew's hair is never tidy and Pettigrew himself--well, you know what he does!--"