"Was it?" She dimpled with pleasure, but added shrewdly: "I'm not one, though. I like getting away from it all and working in the dairy and looking after the tiny calves. I like that best of all, that and my baby chickens. But Vassie's only happy when she's dressed up and paying visits." "I like your way best," he assured her, thinking what a jolly little thing she was after all. But Phoebe's mind could not keep its attention on any one theme for more than a minute, and her eyes and thoughts were wandering. Suddenly she gave a little cry. "Oh, look at those beauties! I must have them!" And she pointed to where, on a vividly green patch of marsh, a whole grove of cotton-grass stood up in the glow of the setting sun. The golden light poured through the silky tufts, making of each a flake of fire, all raining at the same slight slope from hair-fine stems. Against the turf they looked for all the world like Chinese lanterns swung for some miniature revel of the fairies--they seemed literally to diffuse light upon the air. Ishmael stood staring, stung to excitement by that suddenly-glimpsed beauty; but Phoebe darted forward, and the next moment had withdrawn a foot whose stout country shoe and white stocking were dripping greenly. "Here, let me!" cried Ishmael; but she waved him back. "No, you're too heavy; you'd go through at once. Hold my hand while I lean over;" and she swung outwards from his grasp, her other hand stretching vainly. "Best leave that lot," advised Ishmael; "there's some much easier to get at just along there." She turned her head, body still swung forward, and followed the line of his pointing finger to where a cluster of grass as fine, but untransmuted, stood in shadow. "Oh, but that hasn't the sun on it!" she exclaimed naively. The next moment she had seen the absurdity of her own speech, and, pivoting to the path beside him, joined in his laughter. "Well, it seemed sense to me when I said it," she protested. "So it would have been if you could have picked the sun too." "But I suppose it was only the sun that made me want them at all. Aren't I a goose? Vassie would say I shall never get sense." "I like that sort of nonsense; it's rather jolly, somehow. I say, Phoebe, I shall think of you as the girl who wanted to pick the sun. Doesn't it sound ripping?" "Oh, my feet are so wet!" cried Phoebe. "I must hurry home. Mother will fuss so over me, you can't think." "Shall I just get you that sunny grass before we go?" Phoebe hesitated, and then some instinct, finer than her comprehension of it, prompted her to a refusal, and the cotton-grass was left to swing its gossamer globes of light till the sun should have dipped below the rim of the moor.