His
desire to take Ida Mayberry away from that fellow, and have her by
himself, overpowered fear and all other feelings.

Mrs. Cristie's arrangement for the return pleased everybody except
Lanigan Beam. The nurse-maid was perfectly willing to go in the village
cart, and was not at all afraid of horses, and Walter Lodloe had no
objection to sit on the back seat of the wagon with his lady-love, and
help take care of the baby. Lanigan made few remarks about the
situation; he saw that he had made a mistake, and was being punished for
it, and without remonstrance he took the front seat and the reins of the
grays.

XXIV

TRANSLATIONS

Lanigan Beam had no more fear of Mr. Tippengray as a rival than he would
have had of Mr. Petter, but the apportionment of companions for the
return trip nettled him a good deal, and, as a consequence of this, the
pair of grays traveled homeward at a smarter pace, and Hammerstein and
the village cart were soon left far behind.

The road was not the one by which Mr. Tippengray had arrived on the
scene, but led through the woods to the main road, which it joined at a
point not far from the sign of the Squirrel Inn. Hammerstein traveled
very quietly and steadily of his own accord, slackening his gait at the
rough places, thus giving Mr. Tippengray every opportunity for an
uninterrupted converse with his fellow scholar; and he lost no time in
submitting to her his Greek version of the lines from "Pickwick."

"I am very glad you have it with you," said Ida, "for I put my Greek
dictionary in my pocket this morning, when I first came down, hoping to
have a chance to do some translating, and what better chance could I
have than this?"

[Illustration: THE TRANSLATION.]

Drawing out her dictionary and a little blank-book she immediately began
her labors. Mr. Tippengray did not altogether like this. He felt an
intense and somewhat novel desire to converse with the young woman on no
matter what subject, and he would have preferred that she should
postpone the translation. But he would not interrupt the engrossing
occupation into which she now plunged with ardor. Rapidly turning
backward and forward the leaves of the little dictionary, and tapping
her front teeth with her pencil as she puzzled over the correlation of
Greek and English words and expressions, she silently pursued her work.

Although he did not talk to her, it was very pleasant for Mr. Tippengray
to sit and look upon this fai