are some temptations--principally those of the smaller kind--which
it is not in the defensive capacity of female human nature to resist.
The temptation to direct the whole force of her influence, as the
one young lady of the party, toward the instant overthrow of Allan's
arrangement for meeting his friend, was too much for the major's
daughter. She turned on the smiling Pedgift with a look which ought to
have overwhelmed him. But who ever overwhelmed a solicitor?

"I think it's the most lonely, dreary, hideous place I ever saw in my
life!" said Miss Neelie. "If you insist on making tea here, Mr. Pedgift,
don't make any for me. No! I shall stop in the boat; and, though I am
absolutely dying with thirst, I shall touch nothing till we get back
again to the other Broad!"

The major opened his lips to remonstrate. To his daughter's infinite
delight, Mrs. Pentecost rose from her seat before he could say a word,
and, after surveying the whole landward prospect, and seeing nothing
in the shape of a vehicle anywhere, asked indignantly whether they
were going all the way back again to the place where they had left the
carriages in the middle of the day. On ascertaining that this was,
in fact, the arrangement proposed, and that, from the nature of the
country, the carriages could not have been ordered round to Hurle Mere
without, in the first instance, sending them the whole of the way back
to Thorpe Ambrose, Mrs. Pentecost (speaking in her son's interests)
instantly declared that no earthly power should induce her to be out
on the water after dark. "Call me a boat!" cried the old lady, in great
agitation. "Wherever there's water, there's a night mist, and wherever
there's a night mist, my son Samuel catches cold. Don't talk to _me_
about your moonlight and your tea-making--you're all mad! Hi! you two
men there!" cried Mrs. Pentecost, hailing the silent reed cutters on
shore. "Sixpence apiece for you, if you'll take me and my son back in
your boat!"

Before young Pedgift could interfere, Allan himself settled the
difficulty this time, with perfect patience and good temper.

"I can't think, Mrs. Pentecost, of your going back in any boat but the
boat you have come out in," he said. "There is not the least need (as
you and Miss Milroy don't like the place) for anybody to go on shore
here but me. I _must_ go on shore. My friend Midwinter never broke his
promise to me yet; and I can't consent to leave Hurle Mere as long as
there is