Japhra's bright eyes showed his delight. "And we were eager, too. We have spoken often of little master, eh, Ima? Not right to call him that now, though. Scarcely reckoned to see him so grown. Why, thou'rt a full man, little master--there slips the name again!" He twinkled appreciatively at Percival's protest that to no other name would he answer, and he went on: "A full man. Ten stone in the chair, I would wager to it. What of the boxing?" "Pretty good, Japhra. The gloves you gave me are worn, I can tell you." "That's well. Never lose the boxing. It is the man's game. Ay, thou hast the boxer's build, ripe on thee now as I knew would be when I saw it in thee as a boy. The man's game--never lose it." "I'm keener than ever on it," Percival told him. "I'm glad you think I've grown. I've got a punch in my left hand, I believe." His spirits were run high from his former despondency, and he hit with his left and sparkled to see Japhra nod approvingly and to hear him: "Ay, the look of a punch there." "Yes, I've grown," he said. "You've not changed, Japhra--not a scrap." Japhra nodded his head towards the fir trees. "Nor are the old limbs yonder. They stay so till the sap dries, then drop. Nary change. Only the young shoots change. What of Ima?" She had turned away while they talked. She was back at the fire, and Percival turned towards where she stood, about to lift from its hook the cooking pot that hung from the tripod of iron rods. As he looked, she swung it with an easy action to the grass. The pot was heavy: she stooped from the waist, lifted and swung it to the grass with a graceful action that belonged to her supple form, and, as the steam came pouring up and was taken by a puff of breeze to her face, went back a step and looked down at her cooking from beneath her left forearm, bare to the elbow, raised to shield her eyes. III That was Percival's view of her. She had put up her hair, he noticed, since last he saw her. It was dressed low on the nape of her neck; evening's last gleam delighted in its glossy blackness against her olive skin. Beneath the arm across her face he saw the long lashes of her eyelids almost on her cheeks, as she stood looking downwards. Her mouth was long, the lips, blending in a dark red with her brown colouring, lying pleasantly together in the expression that partners the level eye and the comfortable mind. She was full as tall as Percival--very slim in the build and long in the waist that was moulded naturally from her hips to spread and cup her bosom, and therefore taller to the eye. She wore a blouse of dark red cloth; her skirt was of blue, hung short of her ankles, and pressing her thighs disclosed how alert and braced she stood. She wore no shoes nor stockings, and her feet, slender and long, appeared no more than to rest upon the short grass that framed them softly. "What of Ima?" "Ima?--Ima has grown, though," Percival said. "Why, she's simply sprung up!"