the
garden, the idea of picking a nosegay and sending it to her by
one of the boys came into his head. He gathered the flowers, but
then thought better of it and threw them away. What right, after
all, had he to be sending flowers to her--above all, flowers to
which they had attached a meaning, jokingly it was true; but
still a meaning? No, he had no right to do it; it would not be
fair to her, or her father or mother, after the kind way in which
they had all received him. So he threw away the flowers, and
mounted and rode off, watched by the boys, who waved their straw
hats as he looked back just before coming to a turn in the road
which would take him out of sight of the Manor House. He rode
along at a foot's pace for some time, thinking over the events of
the past week; and then, beginning to feel purposeless, and
somewhat melancholy, urged his horse into a smart trot along the
waste land which skirted the road. But, go what pace he would, it
mattered not; he could not leave his thoughts behind; so he
pulled up again after a mile or so, slackened his reins, and,
leaving his horse to pick his own way along the road, betook
himself to the serious consideration of his position.

The more he thought of it, the more discontented he became, and
the day clouded over as if to suit his temper. He felt as if
within the last twenty-four hours he had been somehow
unwarrantably interfered with. His mother and Mrs. Porter had
both been planning something about him, he felt sure. If they had
anything to say, why couldn't they say it out to him? But what
could there be to say? Couldn't he and Mary be trusted together
without making fools of themselves? He did not stop to analyze
his feelings towards her, or to consider whether it was very
prudent or desirable for her that they should be thrown so
constantly and unreservedly together. He was too much taken up
with what he chose to consider his own wrongs for any such
consideration.--"Why can't they let me alone?" was the question
which he asked himself perpetually, and it seemed to him the most
reasonable one in the world, and that no satisfactory answer was
possible to it, except that he ought to be, and should be let
alone. And so at last he rode along Englebourn street, convinced
that what he had to do before all other things just now was to
assert himself properly, and show everyone, even his own mother,
that he was no longer a boy to be managed according to anyone's
fancies