him, it might be regarded as a slightly absurd errand, the reason
guessed; and the sense of the ludicrous, which was rather keen in her, do
his dignity considerable injury in her eyes; and what she thought of him,
even apart from the question of her loving, was all the world to him now.

But the hour came when the patience of love at twenty-one could endure no
longer. One Saturday he approached the school with a mild air of
indifference, and had the satisfaction of seeing the object of his quest
at the further end of her garden, trying, by the aid of a spade and
gloves, to root a bramble that had intruded itself there.

He disguised his feelings from some suspicious-looking cottage-windows
opposite by endeavouring to appear like a man in a great hurry of
business, who wished to leave the handkerchief and have done with such
trifling errands.

This endeavour signally failed; for on approaching the gate he found it
locked to keep the children, who were playing 'cross-dadder' in the
front, from running into her private grounds.

She did not see him; and he could only think of one thing to be done,
which was to shout her name.

"Miss Day!"

The words were uttered with a jerk and a look meant to imply to the
cottages opposite that he was now simply one who liked shouting as a
pleasant way of passing his time, without any reference to persons in
gardens. The name died away, and the unconscious Miss Day continued
digging and pulling as before.

He screwed himself up to enduring the cottage-windows yet more stoically,
and shouted again. Fancy took no notice whatever.

He shouted the third time, with desperate vehemence, turning suddenly
about and retiring a little distance, as if it were by no means for his
own pleasure that he had come.

This time she heard him, came down the garden, and entered the school at
the back. Footsteps echoed across the interior, the door opened, and
three-quarters of the blooming young schoolmistress's face and figure
stood revealed before him; a slice on her left-hand side being cut off by
the edge of the door. Having surveyed and recognized him, she came to
the gate.

At sight of him had the pink of her cheeks increased, lessened, or did it
continue to cover its normal area of ground? It was a question meditated
several hundreds of times by her visitor in after-hours--the meditation,
after wearying involutions, always ending in one way, that it was
impossible to say.

"Your han