In this positively delightful weather, Bertha stood with folded hands in the porch of the Oak House (the floor and the far wall of the kitchen behind her patched with gleams of red and brown light), like the central figure of a picture framed in live green. She was pretty enough to be pleasant to look at; but her charms were mainly the growth of tranquil good temper and sound sense. Broad brow, gray eyes, resolute little chin, the mouth the best feature of the face, her expression thoughtful, serene, and self-possessed, the gray eyes a trifle inclined to dream wide-awake, hair of no particular colour, but golden in the sunlight. She stood leaning sideways, with one shoulder touching the trellis-work of the porch, and one pretty little foot crossed over the other, her head poised sideways and nestled into the ivy. She was looking far away, seeing nothing, and her folded hands drooped before her. A bridge, with a hand-rail on either side of it, crossed the stream and led from a meadow path to the garden. This meadow path was hidden--partly by the garden wall, and partly by the growth of alder and pollard at the side of the stream--and a man came marching along it, unobserved. Before he reached the bridge he brought his footsteps to a sudden halt, and sent a glance towards the porch. Seeing the girl there, sunk in day dreams, he slipped back into the shelter of the withies and took a good long look at her. Twice or thrice, though his feet did not quit the ground, he made a faint movement to go on again, and at length, after two or three minutes of indecision, he walked briskly to the foot of the bridge, threw open the little gate at the end of it, and, suffering it to fall with a clanking noise behind him, tramped across the hollow-resounding boards. At this sudden break upon the rural stillness--for, in spite of the chorus of the birds and the farmyard noises which mingled with it, the general effect was somehow of stillness and solitude--the girl looked round at the new-comer, drew herself up from her lounging attitude, placed her hands behind her and there re-folded them, and stood waiting, with an added flush of colour on her cheek. The new-comer strode along in a kind of awkward resoluteness, looking straight at the girl with a glance which appeared to embarrass her a little, though she returned it frankly enough. ‘Here I am, you see,’ said the new-comer, halting before her. He was tallish, well-made, and of middle age. His expression was a trifle dogged, and for a man who came love-making he looked less prepossessing than he himself might have wished. ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Thistlewood,’ said the girl, in a tone which a sensitive man might have thought purposely defensive. ‘Is it yes or no to-day, Bertha?’ asked Mr. Thistlewood. ‘It has always been no,’ she answered, looking down.