ad been stopped midway
by a young man.

"Stupid!" "Silly creature!" "The girl's a blockhead!" "Where's her eyes,
I wonder?" shouted the carpenters, after the manner of carmen and stage
drivers, when you narrowly escape being run over by _their_
carelessness, at the crossings.

"Shut up!" said the young man, savagely. "Why the d---l don't you keep
your boards where they belong, instead of tumbling them down on people's
heads?--I hope you are not hurt, miss?" (in a gentle voice).

"Oh, no; not at all. I am sure I thank you, sir, very much." Pet
blushed, and hurried away.

The young man and the carpenters then exchanged the customary abusive
epithets with each other, which might have resulted in something more
serious (though such verbal encounters rarely do), but for the desire of
the young man to overtake the young girl whom he had saved from a
bruised shoulder, or a worse accident. Shaking his fist at the four
jeering carpenters, and muttering a farewell execration between his
teeth, he rapidly followed Pet, and soon came up with her.

"You are sure you are not hurt?" said he. "Those scoundrelly workmen!
I'll thrash one of them yet."

Pet was confused by the second appearance of the young man at her side,
though she knew that he would follow her; even her brief experience
having taught her that it is not in the nature of man to do a kindness
to a woman, without exacting a full acknowledgment for it.

"No, sir; I am not hurt the least bit," she replied, looking in his face
no more than gratitude and civility required. Here she would have
stopped, but she feared (charming simplicity of girlhood) that the
young man would, some future day, get into trouble with the four
carpenters. So she added, timidly: "As for the workmen, sir, they were
not to blame. It was all my fault, running into the danger. I--I beg,
sir, that you won't say another word to them."

This was a long speech for timid Pet to make to a stranger, and she
blushed fearfully at the end of it, and wished that the young man
would go away.

"They deserve a thrashing, every one of them," said he; "but, for your
sake, I let them go." The young man spoke in a sweet voice, and his
manner was respectful. Pet had observed, in several hasty side glances,
that he was nicely dressed, and not ill-featured, in all except the
eyes. But had his eyes been large and handsome, instead of small and
forbidding, she would have desired his absence all the same.

"You s