d into his
eyes very pleasantly.

"You don't owe me anything," replied Ambrose. "What is grass?
What do I care for grass? My mind is set on other things."

He noticed gratefully how gentle and mild she looked; there was
such a beautiful softness about her and he had had hardness enough.
He liked her ringlets: they were a novelty; and there hung around
her, in the interior of the carriage, a perfume that was unusual to
his sense and that impressed him as a reminder of her high social
position. But Ambrose reasoned that if a daughter of his neighbor
could wed a Meredith, surely he ought to be able to marry a Crane.

"If you want to see the calf," he said, but very reluctantly, "I'll
saddle my horse and we'll go over to the back pasture."

"Don't saddle your horse," objected Harriet, opening the carriage
door and moving over to the far cushion, "ride with me."

He had never ridden in a brougham, and as he got in very nervously
and awkwardly, he reversed his figure and tried to sit on the
little front seat on which lay Harriet's handkerchief and parasol.

"Don't ride backwards, Mr. Webb," suggested Harriet. "Unless you
are used to it, you are apt to have a headache," and she tapped the
cushion beside her as an invitation to him. "Now tell me about my
calf," she said after they were seated side by side.

As she introduced this subject, Ambrose suddenly looked out of the
window. She caught sight of his uneasy profile.

"Now, don't tell me that there's any bad hews about it!" she cried.
"It is the only pet I have."

"Miss Harriet," he said, turning his face farther away, "you forget
how long your calf has been out here; it isn't a calf any longer:
it has had a calf."

He spoke so sternly that Harriet, who all her life had winced
before sternness, felt herself in some wise to be blamed. And
coolness was settling down upon them when she desired only a
melting and radiant warmth.

"Well," she objected apologetically, "isn't it customary? What's
the trouble? What's the objection? This is a free country!
Whatever is natural is right! Why are you so displeased?"

About the same hour the next Monday morning Ambrose was again
pacing his hallway and thinking of Harriet. At least she was no
tyrant: the image of her softness rose before him again. "I make
no mistake this time."

His uncertainty at the present moment was concerned solely with the
problem of what his offering should be in this case: under wha