For he had heard her singing over her work, and laughing merrily with Bernel; and her face, sweet as it was in its repression, seemed to him more fitted for smiles and laughter and joyousness.
He saw, of course, that brother Tom was a constant source of annoyance to them all, but especially to her, and his blood boiled impotently on her account.
He carried with him--as a delightful memory of her, though not without its cloud--the pretty picture she made when he came upon her one day in the orchard, milking--for, strictly as the Sabbath may be observed, cows must still be milked on a Sunday, not being endowed manna-like, with the gift of miraculous double production on a Saturday.
Her head was pressed into her favourite beast's side, and she was crooning soothingly to it as the white jets ping-panged into the frothing pail, and he stood for a moment watching her unseen.
Then the cow slowly turned her head towards him, considered him gravely for a moment, decided he was unnecessary and whisked her tail impatiently.

Nance's lullaby stopped, she looked round with a reproving frown, and he went silently on his way.
It was another Sunday afternoon that, as he lay in the bracken on the slope of a headland, he saw two slim figures racing down a bare slope on the opposite side of a wide blue gulf, with joyous chatter, and recognized Nance and Bernel.
They disappeared and he felt lonely.

Then they came picking their way round a black spur below, and stood for a minute or two looking down at something beneath them.

Which something he presently discovered must be a pool of size among the rocks, for after a brief retiral, Nance behind a boulder and Bernel into a black hollow, they came out again, she lightly clad in fluttering white and Bernel in nothing at all, and with a shout of delight dived out of sight into the pool below.
He could hear their shouts and laughter echoed back by the huge overhanging rocks.

He saw them climb out again and sit sunning themselves on the grey ledge like a pair of sea-birds, and Nance's exiguous white garment no longer fluttered in the breeze.
Then in they went again, and again, and again, till, tiring of the limits of the pool--huge as he afterwards found it to be--they crept over the barnacled rocks to the sea, and flung themselves fearlessly in, and came ploughing through it towards his headland.