``All the same,'' said Mortimer in his even, dispassionate
tone, ``I should avoid the woods and orchards if I were you,
and give a wide berth to the horned beasts on the farm.''
It was all nonsense, of course, but in that lonely
wood-girt spot nonsense seemed able to rear a bastard brood
of uneasiness.
``Mortimer,'' said Sylvia suddenly, ``I think we will go
back to Town some time soon.''
Her victory had not been so complete as she had supposed;
it had carried her on to ground that she was already anxious
to quit.
``I don't think you will ever go back to Town,'' said
Mortimer. He seemed to be paraphrasing his mother's
prediction as to himself.
Sylvia noted with dissatisfaction and some self-contempt
that the course of her next afternoon's ramble took her
instinctively clear of the network of woods. As to the
horned cattle, Mortimer's warning was scarcely needed, for
she had always regarded them as of doubtful neutrality at
the best: her imagination unsexed the most matronly dairy
cows and turned them into bulls liable to ``see red'' at any
moment. The ram who fed in the narrow paddock below the
orchards she had adjudged, after ample and cautious
probation, to be of docile temper; today, however, she
decided to leave his docility untested, for the usually
tranquil beast was roaming with every sign of restlessness
from corner to corner of his meadow.
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