The willows in the brook-course at the foot of the common suddenly shook with a dazzling effect like diamonds. It was a puff of wind. Anne resumed her normal position. She spread her knees, and put in her lap a handful of hazel nuts, whity-green leafy things, whose one cheek was tanned between brown and pink. These she began to crack and eat. Frances, with bowed head, mused bitterly. “Eh, you know Tom Smedley?” began the young girl, as she pulled a tight kernel out of its shell. “I suppose so,” replied Frances sarcastically. “Well, he gave me a wild rabbit what he’d caught, to keep with my tame one—and it’s living.” “That’s a good thing,” said Frances, very detached and ironic. “Well, it _is!_ He reckoned he’d take me to Ollerton Feast, but he never did. Look here, he took a servant from the rectory; I saw him.” “So he ought,” said Frances. “No, he oughtn’t! and I told him so. And I told him I should tell you—an’ I have done.” Click and snap went a nut between her teeth. She sorted out the kernel, and chewed complacently. “It doesn’t make much difference,” said Frances. “Well, ’appen it doesn’t; but I was mad with him all the same.” “Why?” “Because I was; he’s no right to go with a servant.” “He’s a perfect right,” persisted Frances, very just and cold. “No, he hasn’t, when he’d said he’d take me.” Frances burst into a laugh of amusement and relief. “Oh, no; I’d forgot that,” she said, adding, “And what did he say when you promised to tell me?” “He laughed and said, ‘he won’t fret her fat over that.’” “And she won’t,” sniffed Frances. There was silence. The common, with its sere, blonde-headed thistles, its heaps of silent bramble, its brown-husked gorse in the glare of sunshine, seemed visionary. Across the brook began the immense pattern of agriculture, white chequering of barley stubble, brown squares of wheat, khaki patches of pasture, red stripes of fallow, with the woodland and the tiny village dark like ornaments, leading away to the distance, right to the hills, where the check-pattern grew smaller and smaller, till, in the blackish haze of heat, far off, only the tiny white squares of barley stubble showed distinct. “Eh, I say, here’s a rabbit hole!” cried Anne suddenly. “Should we watch if one comes out? You won’t have to fidget, you know.”