Medea skimmed the ground swallow-like, and in a moment was on her knees comforting him, wiping the dirt out of his chin with her own dainty handkerchief, and vocal with soft murmur of consolation. 'You needn't take on so about him,' I observed politely. 'He'll cry for just one minute, and then he'll be all right.' My estimate was justified. At the end of his regulation time Harold stopped crying suddenly, like a clock that had struck its hour; and with a serene and cheerful countenance wriggled out of Medea's embrace, and ran for a stone to throw at an intrusive blackbird. 'O you boys!' cried Medea, throwing wide her arms with abandonment. 'Where have you dropped from? How dirty you are! I've been shut up here for a thousand years, and all that time I've never seen any one under a hundred and fifty! Let's play at something, at once!' 'Rounders is a good game,' I suggested. 'Girls can play at rounders. And we could serve up to the sun-dial here. But you want a bat and a ball, and some more people.' She struck her hands together tragically. 'I haven't a bat,' she cried, 'or a ball, or more people, or anything sensible whatever. Never mind; let's play at hide-and-seek in the kitchen-garden. And we'll race there, up to that walnut-tree; I haven't run for a century!' She was so easy a victor, nevertheless, that I began to doubt, as I panted behind, whether she had not exaggerated her age by a year or two. She flung herself into hide-and-seek with all the gusto and abandonment of the true artist; and as she flitted away and reappeared, flushed and laughing divinely, the pale witch-maiden seemed to fall away from her, and she moved rather as that other girl I had read about, snatched from fields of daffodil to reign in shadow below, yet permitted now and again to revisit earth and light and the frank, caressing air. Tired at last, we strolled back to the old sun-dial, and Harold, who never relinquished a problem unsolved, began afresh, rubbing his finger along the faint incisions. '_Time tryeth trothe_. Please, I want to know what that means?' Medea's face drooped low over the sun-dial, till it was almost hidden in her fingers. 'That's what I'm here for,' she said presently in quite a changed, low voice. 'They shut me up here--they think I'll forget--but I never will--never, never! And he, too--but I don't know--it is so long--I don't know!' Her face was quite hidden now. There was silence again in the old garden. I felt clumsily helpless and awkward. Beyond a vague idea of kicking Harold, nothing remedial seemed to suggest itself. None of us had noticed the approach of another she-creature--one of the angular and rigid class--how different from our dear comrade! The years Medea had claimed might well have belonged to her; she wore mittens, too--a trick I detested in woman. 'Lucy!' she said sharply, in a tone with _aunt_ writ large over it; and Medea started up guiltily.