her," answered Billy, laughing, and still holding Mary by the
hand and looking into her face. "It's the way I behaved scores of times
whenever I've thought of the only girl I ever loved; and now, though I
didn't intend to do it, I couldn't help it--indeed I couldn't. I hope
you'll forgive me, Mrs Ogle, if Mary does."

"Well, Billy, as my goodman has known you since you were a baby, and
I've known you nearly as long, I suppose I must overlook it this time,"
answered Mrs Ogle. "And now tell me, how is my husband, and Pringle,
and the rest?"

"Ogle and Pringle are very well; but Abel Bush has had an ugly knock on
his side. It will grieve poor Mrs Bush, I know, when I tell her.
He'll be here as soon as he is out of hospital; but he wants to be
aboard again when the ship is ready for sea."

Good Mrs Ogle, on hearing this, said that she would go in and prepare
her neighbour for the news of Abel being wounded; and after she had done
so, True Blue went and told her all the particulars, and comforted her
to the best of his power; and then he hurried off to see old Mrs
Pringle, who forgave him for not coming first to her, which he ought to
have done.

The hours of True Blue's short stay flew quickly by--quicker by far than
he wished. Never had the country to his eyes looked so beautiful, the
meadows so green, the woods so fresh, and the flowers so bright; never
had the birds seemed to sing so sweetly; and never had he watched with
so much pleasure the sheep feeding on the distant downs, or the cattle
come trooping in to their homesteads in the evening.

"After all, Mary," he said, "I really do think there are more things on
shore worth looking at than I once fancied. Once I used to think that
the sea was the only place fit for a man to live on, and now, though I
don't like it less than I did, I do love the look of this place at all
events."

Mary smiled. They were sitting on a mossy bank on the hillside, with
green fields before them and a wood on the right, in which the leaves
were bursting forth fresh and bright, and a wide piece of water some
hundred yards below, in which several wild fowl were dipping their
wings; while beyond rose a range of smooth downs, the intermediate space
being sprinkled over with neat farmhouses and labourers' cottages; and
rising above the trees appeared the grey, ivy-covered tower of the
parish church, with the taper spire pointing upwards to the clear blue
sky--not more clear or brigh