Here a sudden rustle in the leaves on the other side of the hedge startled her, and a curious-looking human head adorned profusely with somewhat disordered locks of red hair perked up enquiringly. Cicely jumped back with an exclamation.
"Saint Moses! What is it?"
"It is me! Merely me!" and Sir Morton Pippitt's quondam guest, Mr. Julian Adderley, rose to his full lanky height, and turned his flaccid face of more or less comic melancholy upon her--"Pray do not be alarmed! I have been reposing under the trees,--and I was, or so I imagine, in a brief slumber, when some dulcet warblings as of a nightingale awoke me"--here, stooping to the ground for his hat, he secured it, and waved it expressively--"and I have, I fear, created some dismay in the mind of the interesting young person who, if I mistake not, is a friend of Miss Vancourt?"
Cicely surveyed him with considerable amusement.
"Never mind who I am!" she said, coolly--"Tell me who YOU are! My faith!--you are as rough all over as a bear! What have you been doing to yourself? Your clothes are covered with leaves!"
"Even as a Babe in the Wood!" responded Adderley, "Yes!--it is so!" and he began to pick off delicately the various burs and scraps of forest debris which had collected and clung to his tweed suit during his open-air siesta--"To speak truly, I am a trespasser in these domains,--they are the Manor woods, I know,--forbidden precincts, and possibly guarded by spring-guns. But I heeded not the board which speaks of prosecution. I came to gather bluebells,--innocent bluebells!--merely that and no more, to adorn my humble cot,--I have a cot not far from here. And as for my identity, my name is Adderley--Julian Adderley--a poor scribbler of rhymes--a votre service!"
He waved his hat with a grand flourish again, and smiled.
"Oh I know!" said Cicely--"Maryllia has spoken of you--you've taken a cottage here for the summer. Pick that bit of honeysuckle for me, will you?--that long trail just hanging over you!"
"With pleasure!" and he gathered the coveted spray and handed it to her.
"Thanks!" and she smiled appreciatively as she took it. "How did you get into that wood? Did you jump the hedge?"
"I did!" replied Adderley.
"Could you jump it again?"
"Most assuredly!"
"Then do it!"