horrible than the peril endured, and he quailed now that the danger
was over.

All his thoughts and half his feelings had hurried for weeks past
towards prayer. In his extremity he had not prayed or thought of
praying. A cool, self-centred, self-preserving something in his mind had
taught him to command all his own forces for one purpose. Would he have
been damned if he had lost the power to pray before that cunning mentor
of the flesh deserted him?

He dressed lingeringly and feebly, and when he had done so he went back
to the tangle of water-weeds he had left on the river-bank. There were
a dozen of the lovely waxlike blooms amongst them, uninjured. He snipped
them away with the scissors, and, climbing the stile with heavy feet,
surrendered them to May.

'Oh,' she said shrilly, 'take 'em away! I couldn't bear to look at 'em!'

'Take 'em,' said Paul. 'They jolly nigh cost me my life.'

Before he answered (or before she caught the meaning of his answer) she
had flung them into the roadway; but at the instant when she understood
him she made a dart at them, gathered them all together in her hands,
and sped to the brookside. There she lay at length upon the turf, and
washed the blooms in the flowing water. Then she gathered long tough
grasses, and looped them together until she had made a cord, with which
she bound the waxen posy. Paul followed and sat near, languidly propped
on one hand to watch her.

'Paul Armstrong,' said May, and he knew at once by this manner of
address that she was going to be severe with him, 'I'd no idea you was
so wicked.'

'Oh,' Paul answered defensively, 'I ain't wicked--not over and above.'

'You're a very wicked boy indeed,' she said. 'You was in danger of your
life--there's no mistake about that, though at first I didn't believe
you.'

'There's nothing wicked in that,' said Paul

'Ah 1' she cried, her little white teeth gripping one end of the grassy
cord whilst she wound the other about the stems of the water-lilies,
'I can see you know what I mean. Using bad language in the very face of
death and danger! I wonder you wasn't drowned for a judgment.'

'Oh, come,' Paul answered. 'I didn't use bad language.'

'Oh, yes, you did, though,' she retorted. 'And I'm not going to be
friends with a boy as talks like that.'

'Not friends!' said Paul. 'Why, May?' He spoke in an accent of
incredulous reproach.

'No,' she said. 'I'm properly shocked, I tell ee. I'm never going to be
frien