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n haughty, you would have labelled her "Diana," and have done with it; but her eyes were gentle, and there was a tenderness about her small mouth that must have pardoned Actæon. A plain gold wrist-watch on a black silk strap was all her jewellery.
"We'd better strike across the next field," said Miss Deriot. "There's a path that'll bring us out opposite The Thatcher. It'll save us about five minutes."
"You might have been born here," said I.
"I was," said Agatha. She nodded towards a beech wood that stood a furlong away. "The trees hide the house. But we left when I was seven, and only came back to the County five years ago. And here's our field."
The five-barred gate was padlocked. I looked at my companion.
"Shall I get over, advance ten paces, and gaze Into the middle distance? Or aren't you that sort?"
Miss Deriot flung back her head and laughed.
"I'd rather you gave me a leg up," she said.
With a hand on my shoulder and a foot in my hand she was up and over in an instant. I vaulted after her.
"You know," I said, "we ought to perform, you and I. With a painter's ladder, a slack wire, and a little practice, we should do wonders. On non-matinée days I might even lift you with my teeth. That always goes well, and no one would know you were as light as a rose-leaf."
"Seven stone three in the bathroom," said Agatha. "Without stockings. Some rose-leaf."
We were going uphill. The meadow through which we were passing sloped to an oaken fence, stoutly constructed to save the cattle from a perilous fall. For on its farther side the ground fell away sheer, so that at this point a bluff formed one high wall of the sunken road for which we were making. The Thatcher, I remembered, stood immediately opposite to the rough grass-grown steps, hewn years ago for the convenience of such passengers as we. There was a stile set in the fence, and as I swung myself over I glanced down past the edge of the