e and
dreams, and in all of them a great bell towered. "Oh, my sweet! my own
beauty!" she cried in Dahlia's language. Meeting Mrs. Sumfit, she called
her "Mother Dumpling," as Dahlia did of old, affectionately, and kissed
her, and ran on to Master Gammon, who was tramping leisurely on to the
oatfield lying on toward the millholms.

"My sister sends you her love," she said brightly to the old man. Master
Gammon responded with no remarkable flash of his eyes, and merely opened
his mouth and shut it, as when a duck divides its bill, but fails to emit
the customary quack.

"And to you, little pigs; and to you, Mulberry; and you, Dapple; and you,
and you, and you."

Rhoda nodded round to all the citizens of the farmyard; and so eased her
heart of its laughing bubbles. After which, she fell to a meditative walk
of demurer joy, and had a regret. It was simply that Dahlia's hurry in
signing the letter, had robbed her of the delight of seeing "Dahlia
Ayrton" written proudly out, with its wonderful signification of the
change in her life.

That was a trifling matter; yet Rhoda felt the letter was not complete in
the absence of the bridal name. She fancied Dahlia to have meant,
perhaps, that she was Dahlia to her as of old, and not a stranger.
"Dahlia ever; Dahlia nothing else for you," she heard her sister say. But
how delicious and mournful, how terrible and sweet with meaning would
"Dahlia Ayrton," the new name in the dear handwriting, have looked! "And
I have a brother-in-law," she thought, and her cheeks tingled. The banks
of fern and foxglove, and the green young oaks fringing the copse, grew
rich in colour, as she reflected that this beloved unknown husband of her
sister embraced her and her father as well; even the old bent beggarman
on the sandy ridge, though he had a starved frame and carried pitiless
faggots, stood illumined in a soft warmth. Rhoda could not go back to the
house.

It chanced that the farmer that morning had been smitten with the virtue
of his wife's opinion of Robert, and her parting recommendation
concerning him.

"Have you a mind to either one of my two girls?" he put the question
bluntly, finding himself alone with Robert.

Robert took a quick breath, and replied, "I have."

"Then make your choice," said the farmer, and tried to go about his
business, but hung near Robert in the fields till he had asked: "Which
one is it, my boy?"

Robert turned a blade of wheat in his mouth.

"I think