“Nothing.”

“That is not possible. I shall find out by-and-by.”

They still stepped on side by side over the dewy bushes. Then suddenly she turned on him.

“Don’t you wish you were a woman, Waldo?”

“No,” he answered readily.

She laughed.

“I thought not. Even you are too worldly-wise for that. I never met a man who did. This is a pretty ring,” she said, holding out her little hand, that the morning sun might make the diamonds sparkle. “Worth fifty pounds at least. I will give it to the first man who tells me he would like to be a woman. There might be one on Robbin Island¹ who would win it perhaps, but I doubt it even there. It is delightful to be a woman; but every man thanks the Lord devoutly that he isn’t one.”

She drew her hat to one side to keep the sun out of her eyes as she walked. Waldo looked at her so intently that he stumbled over the bushes. Yes, this was his little Lyndall who had worn the check pinafores; he saw it now, and he walked closer beside her. They reached the next camp.

“Let us wait at this camp and watch the birds,” she said, as an ostrich hen came bounding toward them, with velvety wings outstretched, while far away over the bushes the head of the cock was visible as he sat brooding on the eggs.

Lyndall folded her arms on the gate bar, and Waldo threw his empty bag on the wall and leaned beside her.

“I like these birds,” she said; “they share each other’s work, and are companions. Do you take an interest in the position of women, Waldo?”

“No.”

“I thought not. No one does, unless they are in need of a subject upon which to show their wit. And as for you, from of old you can see nothing that is not separated from you by a few millions of miles, and strewed over with mystery. If women were the inhabitants of Jupiter, of whom you had happened to hear something, you would pore over us and our condition night and day; but because we are before your eyes you never look at us. You care nothing that this is ragged and ugly,” she said, putting her little finger on his sleeve; “but you strive mightily to make an imaginary leaf on an old stick beautiful. I’m sorry you don’t care for the position of women; I should have liked us to be friends; and it is the only thing about which I think much or feel much — if, indeed, I have any feeling about anything,” she added flippantly, readjusting her dainty little arms. “When I was a baby, I fancy my parents left me out in the frost one night, and I got nipped internally — it feels so!”

“I have only a few old thoughts,” he said, “and I think them over and over again; always beginning where I left off. I never get any further. I am weary of them.”