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Chapter Four

What was she doing?

Marcus hadn’t been trying to keep hi in the dirt, he couldn’t help hi with a little spade, and whatever type of hole she was digging, it couldn’t have been very big, because after barely a minute she stood up, inspected her handiwork first with her eyes, then with her foot, and then – here here Marcus ducked more carefully behind a tree – looked about until she found a pile of dead leaves under which she could hide her small shovel

At that point he almost made his presence known But then she returned to her hole, stared down on it with furrowed brow, and went back to the pile of leaves to retrieve her spade

Tiny shovel in hand, she squatted down andhis view, though, so it wasn’t until she went back to the dead leaves to dispose of as clearly now a piece of evidence that he realized that she had piled up loose dirt in a ring around the hole she’d dug

She’d dug a mole hole

He wondered if she realized that most mole holes did not exist in isolation If there was one, there was usually another, quite visibly nearby But perhaps this didn’tby the number of tin a fall Or perhaps to cause someone else to trip and fall Either way, it was doubtful that anyone would be looking for a companion mole hole in the aftermath of a twisted ankle

He watched for severalat a lady as doing nothing but standing over a ho Probably because Honoria orking so hard to keep herself fro so by the scrunch of her nose, she couldn’t re Then she waltzed, arms outstretched for her invisible partner

She was surprisingly graceful, out there in the woods She waltzed considerably better without reen dress she looked a bit like a sprite He could al about in the wood

She had always been a country girl She’d run wild at Whipple Hill, cla down hills She’d usually tried to tag along with him and Daniel, but even when they refused her company, she’d always found ways to entertain herself, usually out-of-doors Once, he recalled, she had walked around the house fifty times in one afternoon, just to see if it could be done

It was a large house, too She’d been sore the next day Even Daniel had believed her complaints

He pictured Fense No one in her right mind would walk around it ten tiht for a ine when she would have done; he’d certainly never invited anyone when he was a child His father had never been known for his hospitality, and the last thing Marcus would have wanted was to invite his friends into his silent mausoleum of a childhood

After about ten rew bored, because all she was doing was sitting at the base of a tree, her elbows propped on her knees, her chin propped in her hands

But then he heard so She heard it, too, because she jumped to her feet, dashed over to her mole hole, and ja ed herself into as graceful a position as one ht think possible with one’s foot in a mole hole

She waited for a moment, clearly on alert, and then, hoever it was in the woods was as close as he was likely to get, she let out a rather convincing shriek

All those family pantomimes had served her well If Marcus hadn’t just seen her orchestrate her onfall, he would have been convinced she’d injured herself