"About love! You don't know what love means!" he declared,
trampling the hay he stood upon with impatience. "You read and
read, and you get the queerest ideas into your head, and all the
time the world goes on in ways that are quite different from what
YOU are thinking about,--and lovers walk through the fields and
lanes everywhere near us every year, and you never appear to see
them or to envy them--"

"Envy them!" The girl opened her eyes wide. "Envy them! Oh, Cupid,
hear! Envy them! Why should I envy them? Who could envy Mr. and
Mrs. Pettigrew?"

"What nonsense you talk!" he exclaimed,--"Mr. and Mrs. Pettigrew
are married folk, not lovers!"

"But they were lovers once," she said,--"and only three years ago.
I remember them, walking through the lanes and fields as you say,
with arms round each other,--and Mrs. Pettigrew's hands were
always dreadfully red, and Mr. Pettigrew's fingers were always
dirty,--and they married very quickly,--and now they've got two
dreadful babies that scream all day and all night, and Mrs.
Pettigrew's hair is never tidy and Pettigrew himself--well, you
know what he does!--"

"Gets drunk every night," interrupted Robin, crossly,--"I know!
And I suppose you think I'm another Pettigrew?"

"Oh dear, no!" And she laughed with the heartiest merriment. "You
never could, you never would be a Pettigrew! But it all comes to