Priscilla of the Good Intent had been restless when she bade good night to David the Smith and provoked from him a discourteous farewell. She was more restless still when the birds awoke her soon after dawn of the next day and would not let her get to sleep again. So she got up, and lingered often at the open window, listening to the bird-calls and all the fret of newly-wakened life about the fields, while she washed, and dressed herself, and went through the simple rites that accompanied the beginning of the day in Garth. She wondered if Reuben would like the blue print gown better than the lilac one. Her head a little on one side, a shy, quick splash of colour in her cheeks, she looked from one dress to the other, and could not make her choice. Cilla of the Good Intent was a changed lassie since that glamoured walk across the fields with Reuben; wearing-gear had troubled her little until yesterday, and she had chosen her gowns by instinct, without conscious thought about the matter. “I was wearing the lilac one when he liked me first,” she said, with a low, happy laugh. “Perhaps, when he comes to-day, he will like to see me wearing it.” Beyond the open window, where the fields sloped in green hollows to the edge of Garth village, the birds could not be quiet. Ousel-cocks were calling to their mates. Throstles were whistling, piping, singing, the full flood of their melody let loose; and, like practised singers, they could afford to play strange antics with their voices. Up and down the scale the speckled songsters ran; and now they whistled “come out”; and again they called, with pretence of great sobriety, “There’s love a-waiting, love’s a-waiting; love and his lile lass.” On the roof-tops starlings cheeped, until they could bear the thrushes’ rivalry no longer, and began to mimic them in cracked and foolish notes. First love was harbouring with Priscilla. She was in tune with the birds and the leafing land, and she had to put a hand on the bosom of her lilac gown, because the gladness of the day went almost beyond bearing. For once, she was earlier abroad than her father, who had allowed himself another hour of bed after yesterday’s hardship in the fields. Before it was time to set his breakfast on the board and pour out his tea for him, she had done a score of little things about the house, and in the dairy, and in the croft above the house where the fowls were up betimes. “Am going up the fields, father,” she said, as she cleared the table after breakfast. “Right, lile lass! Maids must saunter time and time i’ spring. Wholesome, too, I say--and I warrant ye’ve your day’s work trimly in your hands already.” “Was down an hour before you, father,” she put in playfully. “Ay, old bones are lazy bones. Shame on me, Cilla, lass, to break my fast at half after seven in the morning. Ye’ll not tell David?” he added, with the boisterous slyness that his daughter understood so well.