e, he went into her garden
and looked at her cabbages and potatoes, and reminded himself that they
seemed to him to wear a decidedly feminine aspect; then pulled up several
weeds, and came in again. The clock struck five, and still the snipping
and sewing went on.

Dick attempted to kill a fly, peeled all the rind off his walking-stick,
then threw the stick into the scullery because it was spoilt, produced
hideous discords from the harmonium, and accidentally overturned a vase
of flowers, the water from which ran in a rill across the table and
dribbled to the floor, where it formed a lake, the shape of which, after
the lapse of a few minutes, he began to modify considerably with his
foot, till it was like a map of England and Wales.

"Well, Dick, you needn't have made quite such a mess."

"Well, I needn't, I suppose." He walked up to the blue dress, and looked
at it with a rigid gaze. Then an idea seemed to cross his brain.

"Fancy."

"Yes."

"I thought you said you were going to wear your gray gown all day
to-morrow on your trip to Yalbury, and in the evening too, when I shall
be with you, and ask your father for you?"

"So I am."

"And the blue one only on Sunday?"

"And the blue one Sunday."

"Well, dear, I sha'n't be at Yalbury Sunday to see it."

"No, but I shall walk to Longpuddle church in the afternoon with father,
and such lots of people will be looking at me there, you know; and it did
set so badly round the neck."

"I never noticed it, and 'tis like nobody else would."

"They might."

"Then why not wear the gray one on Sunday as well? 'Tis as pretty as the
blue one."

"I might make the gray one do, certainly. But it isn't so good; it
didn't cost half so much as this one, and besides, it would be the same I
wore Saturday."

"Then wear the striped one, dear."

"I might."

"Or the dark one."

"Yes, I might; but I want to wear a fresh one they haven't seen."

"I see, I see," said Dick, in a voice in which the tones of love were
decidedly inconvenienced by a considerable emphasis, his thoughts
meanwhile running as follows: "I, the man she loves best in the world, as
she says, am to understand that my poor half-holiday is to be lost,
because she wants to wear on Sunday a gown there is not the slightest
necessity for wearing, simply, in fact, to appear more striking than
usual in the eyes of Longpuddle young men; and I not there, either."

"Then there are three dresses good enough f