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The suitor was a well-grown young fellow in a grey suit, with a straw hat jauntily ribboned in red and black. He was smoking, but as he approached he thrust his pipe into his breast-pocket, and came forward with one hand outstretched, and the other gripping nervously at his watch-chain.

“Your servant, Mrs. Foster. And how are you, Miss Dolly? Another fortnight of this and you will be starting on your harvest, I suppose.”

“It’s bad to say beforehand what you will do in this country,” said Farmer Foster, with an apprehensive glance round the heavens.

“It’s all God’s doing,” remarked his wife piously.

“And He does the best for us, of course. Yet He does seem these last seasons to have kind of lost His grip over the weather. Well, maybe it will be made up to us this year. And what did you do at Horndean, mother?”

The old couple walked in front, and the other dropped behind, the young man lingering, and taking short steps to increase the distance.

“I say, Dolly,” he murmured at last, flushing slightly as he glanced at her, “I’ve been speaking to your father about–you know what.”

But Dolly didn’t know what. She hadn’t the slightest idea of what. She turned her pretty little freckled face up to him and was full of curiosity upon the point.

Adam Wilson’s face flushed to a deeper red. “You know very well,” said he, impatiently, “I spoke to him about marriage.”

“Oh, then it’s him you want.”

“There, that’s the way you always go on. It’s easy to make fun, but I tell you that I am in earnest, Dolly. Your father says that he would have no objection to me in the family. You know that I love you true.”

“How do I know that then?”

“I tell you so. What more can I do?”

“Did you ever do anything to prove it?”

“Set me something and see if I don’t do it.”

“Then you haven’t done anything yet?”

“I don’t know. I’ve done what I could.”

“How about this?” She pulled a little crumpled sprig of dog-rose, such as grows wild in the wayside hedges, out of her bosom. “Do you know anything of that?”

He smiled, and was about to answer, when his brows suddenly contracted, his mouth set, and his eyes flashed angrily as they focussed some distant object. Following his gaze, she saw a slim, dark figure, some three fields off, walking swiftly in their direction. “It’s my friend, Mr. Elias Mason,” said she.

“Your friend!” He had lost his diffidence in his anger. “I know all about that. What does he want here every second evening?”

“Perhaps he wonders what you want.”

“Does he? I wish he’d come and ask me. I’d let him see what I wanted. Quick too.”

“He can see it now. He has taken off his hat to me,” Dolly said, laughing.

Her laughter was the finishing touch. He had meant to be impressive, and it seemed that he had only been ridiculous. He swung round upon his heel.

“Very well, Miss Foster,” said he, in a choking voice, “that’s all right. We know where we are now. I didn’t come here to be made a fool of, so good day to you.” He plucked at his hat, and walked furiously off in the direction from which they had come. She looked after him, half frightened, in the hope of seeing some sign that he had relented, but he strode onwards with a rigid neck, and vanished at a turn of the lane.

When she turned again her other visitor was close upon her–a thin, wiry, sharp-featured man with a sallow face, and a quick, nervous manner.

“Good evening, Miss Foster. I thought that I would walk over as the weather was so beautiful, but I did not expect to have the good fortune to meet you in the fields.”