e. I struck downstream
and shouted, as the open spring wagon came into view on the middle span.
They stopped the horse, and the two girls in the bottom of the cart
stood up, steadying themselves by the shoulders of the two in front,
so that they could see me better. They were charming up there, huddled
together in the cart and peering down at me like curious deer when they
come out of the thicket to drink. I found bottom near the bridge and
stood up, waving to them.

'How pretty you look!' I called.

'So do you!' they shouted altogether, and broke into peals of laughter.
Anna Hansen shook the reins and they drove on, while I zigzagged back to
my inlet and clambered up behind an overhanging elm. I dried myself in
the sun, and dressed slowly, reluctant to leave that green enclosure
where the sunlight flickered so bright through the grapevine leaves and
the woodpecker hammered away in the crooked elm that trailed out over
the water. As I went along the road back to the bridge, I kept picking
off little pieces of scaly chalk from the dried water gullies, and
breaking them up in my hands.

When I came upon the Marshalls' delivery horse, tied in the shade, the
girls had already taken their baskets and gone down the east road which
wound through the sand and scrub. I could hear them calling to each
other. The elder bushes did not grow back in the shady ravines between
the bluffs, but in the hot, sandy bottoms along the stream, where their
roots were always in moisture and their tops in the sun. The blossoms
were unusually luxuriant and beautiful that summer.

I followed a cattle path through the thick under-brush until I came to a
slope that fell away abruptly to the water's edge. A great chunk of
the shore had been bitten out by some spring freshet, and the scar was
masked by elder bushes, growing down to the water in flowery terraces. I
did not touch them. I was overcome by content and drowsiness and by the
warm silence about me. There was no sound but the high, singsong buzz
of wild bees and the sunny gurgle of the water underneath. I peeped over
the edge of the bank to see the little stream that made the noise; it
flowed along perfectly clear over the sand and gravel, cut off from the
muddy main current by a long sandbar. Down there, on the lower shelf of
the bank, I saw Antonia, seated alone under the pagoda-like elders. She
looked up when she heard me, and smiled, but I saw that she had been
crying. I slid down into