am in veiled language about her
sister; but such an idea would strike Miriam as monstrous, as a mad and
horrible nightmare. Mark shivered at the mere fancy of the chill that
would come over her and of the disdain in her eyes. Besides, what right
had he on the little he knew to involve Esther with her family?
Superficially he might count himself her younger brother; but if he
presumed too far, with what a deadly retort might she not annihilate his
claim. Most certainly he was not entitled to intervene unless he
intervened bravely and directly. Mark shook his head at the prospect of
doing that. He could not imagine anybody's tackling Esther directly on
such a subject. Seventeen to-day! He looked out of the window and felt
that he was bearing upon his shoulders the whole of that green world
outspread before him.

The serene morning ripened to a splendid noontide, and Mark who had
intended to celebrate his birthday by enjoying every moment of it had
allowed the best of the hours to slip away in a stupor of indecision.
More and more the vision of Esther last night haunted him, and he felt
that he could not go and see the Greys as he had intended. He could not
bear the contemplation of the three girls with the weight of Esther on
his mind. He decided to walk over to Little Fairfield and persuade
Richard to make a journey of exploration up the Greenrush in a canoe. He
would ask Richard his opinion of Will Starling. What a foolish notion!
He knew perfectly well Richard's opinion of the Squire, and to lure him
into a restatement of it would be the merest self-indulgence.

"Well, I must go somewhere to-day," Mark shouted at himself. He secured
a packet of sandwiches from the Rectory cook and set out to walk away
his worries.

"Why shouldn't I go down to Wych Maries? I needn't meet that chap. And
if I see him I needn't speak to him. He's always been only too jolly
glad to be offensive to me."

Mark turned aside from the high road by the crooked signpost and took
the same path down under the ash-trees as he had taken with Esther for
the first time nearly a year ago. Spring was much more like Spring in
these wooded hollows; the noise of bees in the blossom of the elms was
murmurous as limes in June. Mark congratulated himself on the spot in
which he had chosen to celebrate this fine birthday, a day robbed from
time like the day of a dream. He ate his lunch by the old mill dam,
feeding the roach with crumbs until an elderly pike