t too, and more than one, I wager, won't be backward.
Rhoda! Rhoda! why, what's this grave face you are bringing us, my
pretty?'

The girl's eyes addressed Christian's with childlike candour and wonder.
'Why is it,' she said, 'that the mother of that tall Philip doubles her
thumb when you pass by?'

He flushed with knit brows, but laughed and jested: 'I guess because she
does not like the colour of my hair.' But Rhoda had noted a pause, and a
quick turn of the eye upon Giles.

'When the boundary is walked, Rhoda, will you pair with me?'

'Oh!' she said, 'Philip wanted to bespeak me, and I said him no, till my
uncle should have had the refusal of me first.'

She curtsied before the old man in bright solicitation.

'Ah! my maid, here's a lame leg that can't manage the steep. You must
take my proxy, Christian here.'

'But that's another matter,' she said; 'I doubt if I be free.'

Christian's face clouded, but he had no notion of pressing her to
exchange obligation for inclination. When he was away, Rhoda asked,
troubled and timid:

'I have vexed him. Is it for this? or that I was curious----'

'About that doubled thumb? Not that. He'll clear that to you himself if I
know him. Well, then, I will, to spare it him.'

He set forth Christian's position and the ordeal not yet quite suspended.

Rhoda went straight after Christian. She presented both hands to him.
With a glowing cheek and brave eyes, 'I will walk with you!' she said.

'I am proud, cousin! But so? What of Philip?'

With a saucy sparkle she said, 'Do not flounces become a girl's wear,
then? You shall see. Or do you expect a broken head of him?'

There was more of childish mischief than of coquetry in her face.

'Stay, Rhoda, I have to tell you something.'

'No need--no need. Can you think I have not heard?' and she left him to
slow enlightenment.

Thereafter brotherly solicitude and responsibility developed in
Christian, and his liking for the bright young creature grew warm, in
natural degree to match the shy preference and grateful glow that
answered for her appreciation.

Soon, so soon, his jealousy, his honest, blameless jealousy, came to be
piercingly sweet to the girl's heart. How else, when day by day Giles
instructed her of his worth with tales of his champion feats, and of all
his boyhood, its pranks and temerities, its promise by tender honour and
fortitude of the finest quality of man; when her own observation told her
that in the r