“I wouldn’t wait too long, ’Melia. Ye mightn’t get asked so often as you might think for,” sneered the fat girl again; and ’Melia—ready, as usual—said that of course there was that danger to fear, but that she would take her chance all the same. And at that the lads laughed so vexatiously loud that the girls were vexed and bit their lips. By all of which it is to be surmised that, fond as ’Melia was of frolic and flattery, she had never even given the smallest portion of herself away, thus far, and, as her poor mother had proudly said of her, was no more than a bit light-hearted. Only to-day, for the first time, she had not been quite honest with herself, and if she had chosen to confess it, _did_ know who she would take in the end—provided he asked her! But there was the rub. He had not yet asked her. There had been larking enough, but nothing serious; and though you might possibly know how far you dared go with a lad of your own village whom you had known all your life, you did not feel quite so sure with a London chap, for the ways of London chaps were cruel and uncertain, and everybody said you must needs beware of them if you did not want to be led astray; and, though ’Melia wanted as much fun as she could get, she had no intention of being led astray. So, if the truth were known, ’Melia was rather cross with herself than otherwise that it should just happen to be this London chap who had made her feel something that she had never somehow felt for any lad before. She didn’t recognize it to herself as love, and she had scorned to acknowledge it at first, but she knew very well now in the depths of her heart that it was stronger than her will, and that she would take that Mr. Farr fast enough if he were to ask her. What was it in him that was making a fool of her? There was many a better-looking man among her own acquaintance, and he had not even any of the dash that one was wont to expect in one bred in the great world; while as for his condition in life, it was absolutely dark to her, and she had always supposed she would not sell her universally acknowledged charms but to a high bidder. So ’Melia was ashamed of herself when—as the hoppers wandered up the hill again that day at the sunsetting—she found herself loitering behind with the chap from London, and actually consenting to a tryst that very night under the lea of the down beneath the windmill—a moonlight tryst with a stranger, a thing that she had never done in her life before—gadabout as she too truly was, though not in the sense in which the neighbours hinted it. Yes, ’Melia was ashamed of herself, but she was going to do it all the same! So, of course, she was none the better pleased when Mr. Wilkins—meeting her on the meadow’s brow after she had parted from her new swain—said, speaking to her for the first time that day, “’Melia Shaw, there’s Miss Crutch waitin’ for ye round by the oast-house. She’s got a word to say to ye afore ye goes home.”