He turned quickly; it was Cressy, panting behind him! Even then, in her white closely gathered skirts, her bared head and graceful arching neck bent forward, her flying braids freed from the straw hat which she had swung from her arm so as not to impede her flight, there was so much of the following Maenad about her that he was for an instant startled.
He stopped; she bounded to him, and throwing her arms around his neck with a light laugh, let herself hang for a moment breathless on his breast.

Then recovering her speech she said slowly:-- "I started on an Injin trot after you, just as you turned off the trail, but you'd got so far ahead while I was shaking myself clear of Uncle Ben that I had to jist lope the whole way through the woods to catch up." She stopped, and looking up into his troubled face caught his cheeks between her hands, and bringing his knit brows down to the level of her humid blue eyes said, "You haven't kissed me yet.

What's the matter ?" "Doesn't it strike you that I might ask that question, considering that it's three days since I've seen you, and that you left me, in a rather awkward position, to explain matters to your mother ?" he said coldly.
He had formulated the sentence in his mind some moments before, but now that it was uttered, it appeared singularly weak and impotent.
"That's so," she said with a frank laugh, burying her face in his waistcoat.

"You see, dandy boy"-- his pet name--"I reckoned for that reason we'd better lie low for a day or two.

Well," she continued, untying his cravat and retying it again, "how DID you crawl out of it ?" "Do you mean to say your mother did not tell you ?" he asked indignantly.
"Why should she ?" returned Cressy lazily.