chippings upon the walls, smudges of ancient fire and smoke upon the
cornices."

An winced a little and stared uneasily at the walls, muttering below her
breath something about trying to hide with flower garlands the marks they
could not banish, but it was plain the conversation was not pleasing
to her. So unpleasant was talk or sight of woodmen (Thither-folk, as
she called them, in contradiction to the Hither people about us here),
that the girl was clearly relieved when we were free of the town and out
into the open playground of the people. The whole place down there was a
gay, shifting crowd. The booths of yesterday, the arcades, the archways,
were still standing, and during the night unknown hands had redecked
them with flowers, while another day's sunshine had opened the coppice
buds so that the whole place was brilliant past expression. And here the
Hither folk were varying their idleness by a general holiday. They were
standing about in groups, or lying ranked like new-plucked flowers on
the banks, piping to each other through reeds as soft and melodious as
running water. They were playing inconsequent games and breaking off in
the middle of them like children looking for new pleasures. They were
idling about the drinking booths, delicately stupid with quaint, thin
wines, dealt out to all who asked; the maids were ready to chevy or be
chevied through the blossoming thickets by anyone who chanced upon them,
the men slipped their arms round slender waists and wandered down the
paths, scarce seeming to care even whose waist it was they circled or into
whose ear they whispered the remainder of the love-tale they had begun
to some one else. And everywhere it was "Hi," and "Ha," and "So," and
"See," as these quaint people called to one another, knowing each other
as familiarly as ants of a nest, and by the same magic it seemed to me.

"An," I said presently, when we had wandered an hour or so through the