The gods don't make a habit of offering you a big jug of enjoyment." "If they did, you'd be certain to refuse it because you didn't like the shape of the jug!" retorted Kitty.
Nan smiled whole-heartedly.
"What a miserable, carping, discontented creature I must be!" "I'll swear that's not true!" An emphatic masculine voice intervened, and round the corner of the clump of trees beneath which the two girls had taken refuge, swung a man's tall, well-setup figure clad in knickerbockers and a Norfolk coat.
"Good gracious, Roger, how you made me jump!" And Kitty hurriedly lowered a pair of smartly-shod feet which had been occupying a somewhat elevated position in the hammock.
"I'm sorry.

How d'you do, Kit?
And how are you, Miss Davenant ?" answered the new-comer.
The alteration in his voice as he addressed Nan was quite perceptible to anyone well-versed in the symptoms of the state of being in love, and his piercing light-grey eyes beneath their shaggy, sunburnt brows--fierce, far-visioned eyes that reminded one of the eyes of a hawk--softened amazingly as they rested upon her charming face.
"Oh, we're quite all right, thanks," she answered.

"That is, when people don't drop suddenly from the clouds and galvanise us into action this warm weather." She regarded him with a faintly quizzical smile.

He was not particularly attractive in appearance, though tall and well-built.
About forty-two, a typical English sportsman of the out-door, cold-tub-in-the-morning genus, he had a square-jawed, rather ugly face, roofed with a crop of brown hair a trifle sunburnt at its tips as a consequence of long days spent in the open.

His mouth indicated a certain amount of self-will, the inborn imperiousness of a man who has met with obedient services as a matter of course, and whose forebears, from one generation to another, have always been masters of men.