children in the front garden.

"I'm glad you've come," said the mother, looking at him with her great
appealing brown eyes. "It is such a sunny day. I was just going down the
fields for the first time this year."

He felt she would like him to come. That soothed him. They went, talking
simply, he gentle and humble. He could have wept with gratitude that she
was deferential to him. He was feeling humiliated.

At the bottom of the Mow Close they found a thrush's nest.

"Shall I show you the eggs?" he said.

"Do!" replied Mrs. Leivers. "They seem SUCH a sign of spring, and so
hopeful."

He put aside the thorns, and took out the eggs, holding them in the palm
of his hand.

"They are quite hot--I think we frightened her off them," he said.

"Ay, poor thing!" said Mrs. Leivers.

Miriam could not help touching the eggs, and his hand which, it seemed
to her, cradled them so well.

"Isn't it a strange warmth!" she murmured, to get near him.

"Blood heat," he answered.

She watched him putting them back, his body pressed against the hedge,
his arm reaching slowly through the thorns, his hand folded carefully
over the eggs. He was concentrated on the act. Seeing him so, she loved
him; he seemed so simple and sufficient to himself. And she could not
get to him.

After tea she stood hesitating at the bookshelf. He took "Tartarin de
Tarascon". Again they sat on the bank of hay at the foot of the stack.
He read a couple of pages, but without any heart for it. Again the dog
came racing up to repeat the fun of the other day. He shoved his muzzle
in the man's chest. Paul fingered his ear for a moment. Then he pushed
him away.

"Go away, Bill," he said. "I don't want you."

Bill slunk off, and Miriam wondered and dreaded what was coming. There
was a silence about the youth that made her still with apprehension. It
was not his furies, but his quiet resolutions that she feared.

Turning his face a little to one side, so that she could not see him, he
began, speaking slowly and painfully:

"Do you think--if I didn't come up so much--you might get to like
somebody else--another man?"

So this was what he was still harping on.

"But I don't know any other men. Why do you ask?" she replied, in a low
tone that should have been a reproach to him.

"Why," he blurted, "because they say I've no right to come up like
this--without we mean to marry--"

Miriam was indignant at anybody's forcing the issues between them. She