The page made her a magnanimous gesture. "In that case I will not be so mean
as to refuse you," he consented. And he sat smiling to himself in sly content
after she had hurried away.
Emboldened by that smile, the dog suddenly laid aside his soberness of
demeanor. Pouncing upon a fagot which had fallen from one of the loads, he
brought it in his teeth, with shining eyes and much frantic tail-wagging, and
rubbed it against his friend's knee. He had not miscalculated. The boy's smile
deepened easily into a laugh, and he leaped to his feet to accept the
challenge. Seizing the stick, he put all the strength of his lithesome body
into an effort to make off with it, while the great hound braced himself, with
a rapture of rumbling growls and short delighted barks. So they tussled, back
and forth, this way and that, amid a merry tumult of barking and laughter,--
such a tumult that neither heard the steps that both were waiting for, when at
last those steps came briskly through the archway. The first they knew of it,
the Lord of Ivarsdale was standing under the lintel, chatting with those who
came behind him.
With lips yet parted by their breathless laughter, the lad straightened
quickly from his sport, and stood shaking back his tumbling curls and mopping
his hot face, in which the rich color glowed through the tanned skin like the
velvety red on a golden peach.
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