"Well, you are cunning!" cried the maiden, with a sigh. "I thought that
your nature was loftier than that. No, I do not know anything of butlers
and footmen; and I think that the less I know of you the better."

"Oh, Insie, darling Insie, if you run away like that--I have got both
your hands, and you shall not run away. Do you want to kill me, Insie?
They have had the doctor for me."

"Oh, how very dreadful! that does sound dreadful. I am not at all
crying, and you need not look. But what did he say? Please to tell me
what he said."

"He said, 'Salts and senna.' But I got up a high tree. Let us think of
nicer things. It is enough to spoil one's dinner. Oh, Insie, what is
anything to eat or drink, compared with looking at you, when you are
good? If I could only tell you the things that I have felt, all day and
all night, since this day fortnight, how sorry you would be for having
evil thoughts of me!"

"I have no evil thoughts; I have no thoughts at all. But it puzzles me
to think what on earth you have been thinking. There, I will sit down,
and listen for a moment."

"And I may hold one of your hands? I must, or you would never understand
me. Why, your hands are much smaller than mine, I declare! And mine are
very small; because of thinking about you. Now you need not laugh--it
does spoil everything to laugh so. It is more than a fortnight since
I laughed at all. You make me feel so miserable. But would you like to
know how I felt? Mind, I would rather cut my head off than tell it to
any one in the world but you."

"Now I call that very kind of you. If you please, I should like to know
how you have been feeling." With these words Insie came quite close up
to his side, and looked at him so that he could hardly speak. "You may
say it in a whisper, if you like," she said; "there is nobody coming for
at least three hours, and so you may say it in a whisper."

"Then I will tell you; it was just like this. You know that I began to
think how beautiful you were at the very first time I looked at you. But
you could not expect me so to love you all at once as I love you now,
dear Insie."

"I can not understand any meaning in such things." But she took a little
distance, quite as if she did.

"Well, I went away without thinking very much, because I had a bad place
in my knee--a blue place bigger than the new half crown, where you saw
that the pony kicked me. I had him up, and thrashed him, when I got
home; but that