GEORGE. No, Miss Jessie. My mood is not a singing mood this day. JESSIE. You ask him, Joan. CLARA. Will not you sing one little verse, George? GEORGE. Nay—strangers from London town would have no liking for the songs we sing down here among the fields. CLARA. There was a song I once heard in the country that pleased me very well. JESSIE. What was it called? CLARA. I cannot remember the name—but there was something of bushes and of briars in it. JESSIE. I know which that is. ’Tis a pretty song. Sing it, Georgie. GEORGE. Nay—sing it yourself, Miss Jessie. JESSIE. ’Tis like this at the beginning.—[_she sings or repeats_]— “Through bushes and through briars I lately took my way, All for to hear the small birds sing And the lambs to skip and play.” CLARA. That is the song I was thinking of, Jessie. GEORGE. Can you go on with it, Miss Jessie. JESSIE. I can’t say any more. CLARA. [_Gently singing or speaking_.] I overheard my own true love, Her voice it was so clear. “Long time I have been waiting for The coming of my dear.” GEORGE. [_Heaving a sigh_.] That’s it. JESSIE. Go on, Joan, I do like the sound of it. CLARA. Shall I go on with the song, George? GEORGE. As you please. CLARA. “Sometimes I am uneasy And troubled in my mind, Sometimes I think I’ll go to my love And tell to him my mind.” “And if I would go to my love My love he will say nay If I show to him my boldness He’ll ne’er love me again.” JESSIE. When her love was hid a-hind of the bushes and did hear her a-singing so pitiful, what did he do then? CLARA. I don’t know, Jessie. JESSIE. I reckon as he did come out to show her as he knowed all what she did keep in her mind. CLARA. Very likely the briars were so thick between them, Jess, that he never got to the other side for her to tell him. GEORGE. Yes, that’s how ’twas, I count. JESSIE. [_Running up to_ ROBIN.] I’m going to look at your book along of you, Robin. ROBIN. But I’m the one to turn the leaves, remember. [_The children sit side by side looking at the picture book_. CLARA _sews_. GEORGE _goes on with the potatoes_. _As the last one is finished and tossed into the water_, _he looks at_ CLARA _for the first time_. _A long silence_. GEORGE. Miss Clara and me was good friends once on a time. CLARA. Tell me how it was then, George. GEORGE. I did used to put her on the horse’s back, and we would go down to the water trough in the evening time and— CLARA. What else did you and Miss Clara do together, George? GEORGE. Us would walk in the woods aside of one another—And I would lift she to a high branch in a tree—and pretend for to leave her there. CLARA. And then? GEORGE. Her would call upon me pitiful—and I would come back from where I was hid. CLARA. And did her crying cease? GEORGE. She would take and spring as though her was one of they little wild squirrels as do dance about in the trees.