She was a child, no more; yet of a well-grown, lissom grace that deceived folk into giving her more than the bare fifteen years she counted to her age. Hers was no rose-and-lily complexion. She displayed the healthy tan that comes of a life lived in the open far away from cities. Yet one glance into the long-shaped, deeply blue eyes that were the glory of her lovely little face sufficed to warn you that though rustic she was not simple. Here was one who possessed a full share of that feminine guile which is the heritage from Mother Eve to her favoured daughters. If you were a man and wise, you would be most wary when she was most demure.
Swinging now, her loosened brown hair streamed behind her as she flew forward, and tossed itself into a cloud about her face as she went back. And she sang as nearly as possible in rhythm with her swinging:
“Hey, young love! Ho, young love! Where do you tarry? Whiles here I stay for you Waiting to marry. Hey, young love! Ho, young....”
The song ended in a scream. Unheard, unsuspected, the stripling had crept forward through the trees. At the top of her backward swing he had caught her about the waist in his strong young arms. There was a momentary flutter of two black legs amid an agitated cloud of petticoat, then the rope swung forward, and the nymph was left in the arms of her young satyr. But only for a moment. Out of that grip she broke in a fury--real or pretended--and came to earth breathless, with flushed cheeks and flashing eye.
“You give yourself strange liberties, young Randal,” said she, and boxed his ears. “Who bade you here?”
“I ... I thought you called me,” said he, grinning, no whit abashed by either blow or look. “Come, now, Nan. Confess it!”
“I called you? I?” She laughed indignantly. “’Tis very likely! Oh, very likely!”
“You’ll deny it, of course, being a woman in the making. But I heard you.” And he quoted for her, singing:
“Hey, young love! Ho, young love! Where do you tarry?”
“I was hiding on the other side of the wall. I came at once. And all I get for my pains and the risk to a fairly new pair of breeches is a blow and a denial.”
“That’s as may be. Meanwhile there’s this matter of a blow. Now a blow is a thing I take from nobody. For a man there is my sword....”