"I want to go to Brancepeth," announced Fawnie, "to buy some clothes. I ain't got a decent thing to wear, and Baby, he's just burstin' out of his little white dress, and his pink one is all iron rust, and his feet are bare, and he's got to have a baby carriage. I can't go around carryin' him on my back like I was a common squaw. I want to get him a wicker carriage with a silk parasol, and a lace cover with a pink bow, and pink kid slippers, and an embroidered dress. . . . How much money are you goin' to give me, Durek?"
"You evidently take me for a millionaire," said Derek. "Do you realize that I haven't got a cent from my thimbleberries; that I've just paid the help their wages, and the vet. his bill; that my taxes are due, and I've just lost a good milch cow?"
Fawnie laughed gaily. "Oh, you are stingy! You know you have heaps of money in the bank. Get me some of that. If you won't I will go and work for Mrs. Chard and earn some. And I'll tell Mr. Chard you beat me."
They were sitting on the shore watching the red harvest moon rise from the blackness of the lake. Fawnie held the baby on her lap. She had wrapped a shawl about him so that his downy head, still soft and unhardened in bone or cartilage projected. Derek, stretched on the sand, lazily watched the pair. Edmund, sitting on the breakwater at a little distance, smoked and dangled his legs in silence. His
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