berry for Jinny, let alone Lad's Love or Johnny Jumpups and Kissme's,
and ye keep talkin' across me, you two, till I'm tired. Now look here,"
she burst out with sudden decision, "Jinny's gone on ahead in a kind o'
huff; but I reckon she's done that afore too, and you'll find her, jest
as Spinner did, on the rise of the hill, sittin' on a pine stump and
lookin' like this." (Here the youngest Miss Piper locked her
fingers over her left knee, and drew it slightly up,--with a sublime
indifference to the exposure of considerable small-ankled red
stocking,--and with a far-off, plaintive stare, achieved a colorable
imitation of her elder sister's probable attitude.) "Then you jest go up
softly, like as you was a bear, and clap your hands on her eyes, and
say in a disguised voice like this" (here Del turned on a high falsetto
beyond any masculine compass), "'Who's who?' jest like in forfeits."
"But she'll be sure to know me," said the surveyor timidly.
"She won't," said Del in scornful skepticism.
"I hardly think"--stammered the young man, with an awkward smile, "that
I--in fact--she'll discover me--before I can get beside her."
"Not if you go softly, for she'll be sittin' back to the road,
so--gazing away, so"--the youngest Miss Piper again stared dreamily in
the distance, "and you'll creep up just behind, like this."
"But won't she be angry? I haven't known her long--that is--don't you
see?" He stopped embarrassedly.
"Can't hear a word you say," said Del, shaking her head decisively.
"You've got my deaf ear. Speak louder, or come closer."
But here the instruction suddenly ended, once and for all time! For
whether the young man was seriously anxious to perfect himself; whether
he was truly grateful to the young girl and tried to show it; whether he
was emboldened by the childish appeal of the long brown distinguishing
braid down her back, or whether he suddenly found something peculiarly
provocative in the reddish brown eyes between their thickset hedge of
lashes, and with the trim figure and piquant pose, and was seized with
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