t you are, this time, for I
accepted the conditions, you know. And besides--you have the
pencils yet.' There was a certain gay simplicity about his
manner that was disarming.

'Did you?' said Hazel looking down at him. 'Then you are
injudicious to accept them unheard. One of them is very hard.
The first is easy--you are to restore the leaf when the sketch
is done.'

'It is the decree of the strongest! And the other?'

'You are to confess my sketch to be the best. Now what is the
subject to be?'

'Stop a bit!' said he, turning over the book which Wych Hazel
had given him wrong side first--'I should like to see what I am
to swear to, before we begin.' And the bits of her drawing
which were found there received a short but keen
consideration. 'The subject?--is this grey rock where we are--
with what is on and around it.'

'You are lawless. And your subject is--unmanageable!'

'Do you think so?'

'You want what is "around" this grey rock,' she said with a
light twirl on the tips of her toes. 'If your views on most
subjects are as comprehensive!'--

'They can be met, nevertheless,' said he, laughing, 'if you
take one part of the subject and I the other--and if you'll
give me a pencil! We must be done in a quarter of an hour.'

'There it is,' said Wych Hazel,--'then you can take half of the
rock'--and she walked away to a position as far behind Mr.
Rollo as sweetbriars and sumach would permit. That gentleman
turned about and faced her gravely; also withdrew a step,
looked at his match, and throwing on his hat which had lain
till now on the moss, went to work. It was work in earnest,
for minutes were limited.

'Mr. Rollo?' said Wych Hazel, 'I cannot draw a thing if you
sit there watching me. Just take your first position, please.'

'I should lose my point of view--you would not ask me to do
that? Besides, you are safe--I am wholly occupied with myself.'

'No doubt! But if you presume to put _me_ in your sketch I'll
turn you into a red squirrel'--with which fierce threat Miss
Hazel drooped her head till her 'point of view' must have been
at least merged in the brim of her flat hat, and went at her
drawing. That she had merged herself as well in the interest
of the game, was soon plain,--shyness and everything else went
to the winds: only when (according to habit) some scrap of a
song broke from her lips, then did she rebuke herself with an
impatient gesture or exclamation, while the hat drooped lower
than ev