, and had decided that
it would be dishonest in her, as an engaged young woman, to trifle with
men's eyes and hands any more. Finding that Shiner still retained his
hold of the lantern, she relinquished it, and he, having found her
retaining it, also let go. The lantern fell, and was extinguished. Fancy
moved on.

"Where is the path?" said Mr. Shiner.

"Here," said Fancy. "Your eyes will get used to the dark in a minute or
two."

"Till that time will ye lend me your hand?" Fancy gave him the extreme
tips of her fingers, and they stepped from the plot into the path.

"You don't accept attentions very freely."

"It depends upon who offers them."

"A fellow like me, for instance." A dead silence.

"Well, what do you say, Missie?"

"It then depends upon how they are offered."

"Not wildly, and yet not careless-like; not purposely, and yet not by
chance; not too quick nor yet too slow."

"How then?" said Fancy.

"Coolly and practically," he said. "How would that kind of love be
taken?"

"Not anxiously, and yet not indifferently; neither blushing nor pale; nor
religiously nor yet quite wickedly."

"Well, how?"

"Not at all."

* * * * *

Geoffrey Day's storehouse at the back of his dwelling was hung with
bunches of dried horehound, mint, and sage; brown-paper bags of thyme and
lavender; and long ropes of clean onions. On shelves were spread large
red and yellow apples, and choice selections of early potatoes for seed
next year;--vulgar crowds of commoner kind lying beneath in heaps. A few
empty beehives were clustered around a nail in one corner, under which
stood two or three barrels of new cider of the first crop, each bubbling
and squirting forth from the yet open bunghole.

Fancy was now kneeling beside the two inverted hives, one of which rested
against her lap, for convenience in operating upon the contents. She
thrust her sleeves above her elbows, and inserted her small pink hand
edgewise between each white lobe of honeycomb, performing the act so
adroitly and gently as not to unseal a single cell. Then cracking the
piece off at the crown of the hive by a slight backward and forward
movement, she lifted each portion as it was loosened into a large blue
platter, placed on a bench at her side.

"Bother these little mortals!" said Geoffrey, who was holding the light
to her, and giving his back an uneasy twist. "I really think I may as
well go indoors and take 'em out, poor things! for t