-and
rather dry bread too."

"You do not say so!" cry I, in some astonishment.

"If I had come here seven years ago," he says, taking both my pale
yellow hands in his light gray ones, and looking at me with eyes which
seem darker and deeper than usual under the shade of the brim of his
tall hat--"by-the-by, you would have been a little girl then--as little
as Tou Tou--"

"Yes," interrupt I, breaking in hastily; "but, indeed, I never was a bit
like her, never. I _never_ had such legs--ask the boys if I had!"

"I did not suppose that you had," he answers, bursting into a hearty and
most unfeigned laugh! "but" (growing grave again), "Nancy, suppose that
I had come here then! I should have had no shooting to offer the
boys--no horses to mount Algy--no house worth asking Barbara to--"

"No more you would!" say I, too much impressed with surprise at this new
light on Sir Roger's past life to notice the sort of wistfulness and
inquiry that lurks in his last words; then, after a second, perceiving
it: "And you think," say I, loosing my hands from his, and growing as
pink as the delicate China rose-bud that is peeping round the corner of
the trellis in at the window, "that there would not have been as much
inducement _then_ for me to propose to you, as there was in the present
state of things!"

I am laughing awkwardly as I speak; then, eagerly changing the
conversation, and rushing into another subject: "By-the-by, I had
something to say to you--something quite important--before we
digressed."

"Yes?"

"O general!" taking hold of the lapel of his coat, and looking up at him
with appealing earnestness, "do you know that I have made up my mind to
give _him_ the _bag_ to-day! it is no use putting off the evil day--it
_must_ come, after supper--they all say _after supper_!"

"Yes?"

"Well, I want you to talk to him _all day_, and get him into a
good-humor by then, if you can, that is all!"

"_That is all!_" repeats my husband, with the slightest possible
ironical accent. Then we go to church. It is too near to drive, so we
all walk. The church-yard elms are out in fullest leaf above our heads.
There are so many leaves, and they are so close together, that they hide
the great brown rooks' nests. They do not hide the rooks themselves. It
would take a good deal to do that. Dear pleasant-spoken rooks, talking
so loudly and irreverently about their own secular themes--out-cawing
the church-bells, as we pace by, devout and