Thus they walked at each other's side to the spot where the rill was caught up in a rotting wooden conduit, from which it spouted with a soft singsong.
Withered ferns covered the light green moss with their ragged red fronds and tired leaves came fluttering down out of the beech trees.
"We'll spread the plaid," she said eagerly, taking the blanket from him--he had managed to snatch it away from her--and threw it over the fern stalks, which cracked under the weight.
She sat down on the right side of the plaid and invited him to make use of the left side, to keep his fine new suit clean.
"Do you hear the vesper bells?" he asked. "We ought to be eating supper now."
"We poor church mice, we have nothing," she laughed.
"Who told you so?" he asked, triumphantly producing a small paper package from his pocket, which contained a mashed, crumbly piece of cake. They laid it between them and ate the morsels from their hollowed hands, laughing all the while. The cake tasted like sweet wine, and Lilly felicitously hit upon its correct name, punch-tart, of which she was especially fond.
"The English call it tipsy-cake," he explained. "It quite befuddles one."
"That amount of intoxication I'll risk," she laughed, and threw herself on her back, folding her hands behind her head.
She lay there a time without moving and looked up to the sky, of which jagged oval bits shimmered through the foliage. Rosy flakes swam in the opalescent ether, and way beyond appeared the vault of another heaven, which in some places burst through the nearer sky like a deep blue foreboding.
Lilly stretched her arms upward yearningly.
"Do you want to catch the larks?" he asked.
No, not that, but she would like to have one of the falling leaves.
They kept dropping, dropping from the boughs like birds with broken wings, and fluttered over the ground in little spirals, as if undecided where to rest.
"We'll see to which of us the first one comes," he said, and also stretched himself on his back.
"The one to whom a leaf comes first will be blessed with a great piece of good fortune," she added.
At last one floated toward him and prepared to settle on his nose.
But he would not permit this--hers must be that great piece of good fortune--and he blew the leaf back to her.