ounce, Mr.--(bother that name!) and Miss Milton. Then two women
weeping together, and a knightly figure in the background dressed in a
handsome Norfolk jacket, still conspicuously new. He would conceal his
feeling until the very end. Then, leaving, he would pause in the doorway
in such an attitude as Mr. George Alexander might assume, and say,
slowly and dwindlingly: "Be kind to her--BE kind to her," and so depart,
heartbroken to the meanest intelligence. But that was a matter for the
future. He would have to begin discussing the return soon. There was no
traffic along the road, and he came up beside her (he had fallen behind
in his musing). She began to talk. "Mr. Denison," she began, and then,
doubtfully, "That is your name? I'm very stupid--"

"It is," said Mr. Hoopdriver. (Denison, was it? Denison, Denison,
Denison. What was she saying?)

"I wonder how far you are willing to help me?" Confoundedly hard to
answer a question like that on the spur of the moment, without steering
wildly. "You may rely--" said Mr. Hoopdriver, recovering from a violent
wabble. "I can assure you--I want to help you very much. Don't consider
me at all. Leastways, consider me entirely at your service." (Nuisance
not to be able to say this kind of thing right.)

"You see, I am so awkwardly situated."

"If I can only help you--you will make me very happy--" There was a
pause. Round a bend in the road they came upon a grassy space between
hedge and road, set with yarrow and meadowsweet, where a felled tree lay
among the green. There she dismounted, and propping her machine against
a stone, sat down. "Here, we can talk," she said.

"Yes," said Mr. Hoopdriver, expectant.

She answered after a little while, sitting, elbow on knee, with her chin
in her hand, and looking straight in front of her. "I don't know--I am
resolved to Live my Own Life."

"Of course," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "Naturally."

"I want to Live, and I want to see what life means. I want to learn.
Everyone is hurrying me, everything is hurrying me; I want time to
think."

Mr. Hoopdriver was puzzled, but admiring. It was wonderful how clear and
ready her words were. But then one might speak well with a throat and
lips like that. He knew he was inadequate, but he tried to meet the
occasion. "If you let them rush you into anything you might repent of,
of course you'd be very silly."

"Don't YOU want to learn?" she asked.

"I was wondering only this morning," he began, and st