ds
breaking, as it were, from his lips.

'Do you think Catherine pretty?' said Rose, with an excellent pretence
of innocence, detaching a little pebble and flinging it harmlessly at a
water-wagtail balancing on a stone below.

He flushed. 'Pretty! You might as well apply the word to your mountains,
to the exquisite river, to that great purple peak!'

'Yes,' thought Rose, 'she is not unlike that high cold peak!' But her
girlish sympathy conquered her; it was very exciting, and she liked
Elsmere. She turned back to him, her face overspread with a quite
irrepressible smile. He reddened still more, then they stared into each
other's eyes, and without a word more understood each other perfectly.

Rose held out her hand to him with a little brusque _bon camarade_
gesture. He pressed it warmly in his.

'That was nice of you!' he cried. 'Very nice of you! Friend, then?'

She nodded and drew her hand away just as Agnes and the vicar disturbed
them.

Meanwhile Catherine was standing by the side of the pony carriage,
watching Mrs. Thornburgh's preparations.

'You're sure you don't mind driving home alone?' said, in a troubled
voice. 'Mayn't I go with you?'

'My dear, certainly not! As if I wasn't accustomed to going about alone
at my time of life! No, no, my dear, you go and have your walk; you'll
get home before the rain. Ready, James.'

The old vicarage factotum could not imagine what made his charge so
anxious to be off. She actually took the whip out of his hand and gave a
flick to the pony, who swerved and started off in a way which would have
made his mistress clamorously nervous under any other circumstances.
Catherine stood looking after her.

'Now, then, right about face and quick march!' exclaimed the vicar.
'We've got to race that cloud over the Pike. It'll be up with us in no
time.'

Off they started and were soon climbing the slippery green slopes, or
crushing through the fern of the fell they had descended earlier in the
afternoon. Catherine for some little way walked last of the party, the
vicar in front of her. Then Elsmere picked a stonecrop, quarrelled over
its precise name with Rose, and waited for Catherine, who had a very
close and familiar knowledge of the botany of the district.

'You have crushed me,' he said, laughing, as he put the flower carefully
into his pocketbook; 'but it is worth while to be crushed by anyone
who can give so much ground for their knowledge. How you do know your
moun