rocking like a ship, the brown head of the horse ducking, the brown knees lifted and planted strenuously. Geoffrey wished it would be quick.

“Tha didna think — ”

Geoffrey started, coiled within himself, and looked down at the handsome lips moving in speech below the brown arms of his brother.

“Tha didna think ‘er’d be thur wi’ me — or tha wouldna ha’ left me to it,” Maurice said, ending with a little laugh of excited memory. Geoffrey flushed with hate, and had an impulse to set his foot on that moving, taunting mouth, which was there below him. There was silence for a time, then, in a peculiar tone of delight, Maurice’s voice came again, spelling out the words, as it were: