his shirt and jacket, you look like an elephant, she'd told him.

     Now she said: Come and sit down, Jim my dear.

     "No," he said.  "I know what's intended."

     And she broke into that laughter of hers.  Oh, do you? she asked.

     "But not yet awhile, Jess," he said to her.  "I'm not quite ready yet."

    She went on laughing.  That'll be the first time then, surely, she said to him, we've never known that happen Jim, have we?

   "Jess, you always had a naughty mind along with you." he told her, not knowing whether he felt like laughing too.  Or, seeing her now in daisies and buttons, like doing something else entirely.   Before he'd suggested the blanket, all that time ago an no time at all (as he was beginning to realise more and more  clearly) her first idea, joking perhaps, had been for him to lie on the grass and her on top of him, and he'd said he didn't think you could manage anything that way.

   Though later, mind you, they had found out differently.  One way and another, as she'd said..

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