'Of course it is all right,' replies Prue, vaulting over the tennis-net to let off a little of her steam. 'If it had not been for your long face, I should never have doubted it.' 'Yes?' 'It was just as I expected; he was too polite to leave them. He says he never in his life remembers spending two such tedious days; but he is so unselfish. He says himself that he knows he is full of faults, but that he cannot understand any one being selfish, even from the point of view of their own pleasure. He said it so simply.' 'H'm!' 'I was so sorry for you, Peggy--saddled with that tiresome John Talbot all morning. Of course I ought to have helped you; but you know I had not a word to throw to a dog. It was very provoking of him, wasting all your morning for you.' 'My morning was not wasted,' rejoins Margaret calmly. 'He may be a very bad man, but he mows well.' 'He might as well have finished it while he was about it,' says Prue, captiously eyeing the lawn. 'It looks almost worse than it did before, half mown and half unmown.' For an instant Margaret hesitates; then, with a slight though perceptible effort over herself, she says: 'I suppose he thought so; for he has offered to come again to-morrow to finish it. He said one could not leave it half-shaven, like a poodle.' She looks at her sister a little doubtfully as she speaks--as one not quite sure of the soundness of the comparison, and that would be glad to have it confirmed by another judgment. But Prue's wings have already carried her up again into her empyrean. 'We are to ride quite late this afternoon. He wants me to see the reapers reaping by moonlight as we come home. He says he always associates me with moonlight. I am to ride the bay. He says he quite looks upon her as mine--that it gives him a sort of turn to see any one else on her;' and so on, and so on. Margaret smiles rather sadly; but as it is no use going to meet trouble half-way, she allows herself to be carried away by Prue's infectious spirits, on however rickety a foundation those spirits may be built. In her heart she is scarcely more pleased with her own conduct than with her sister's. 'One cannot touch pitch without being defiled,' she says to herself severely. She says it several times--is, indeed in the act of saying it next morning, when, on the stroke of eleven, punctual to his minute, the poor pitch reappears. She sets him at once to his mowing, and allows him very short intervals for rest and conversation. Since he has come to work, let him work. No doubt as soon as he discovers that it is honest labour and not play that is expected of him he will trouble her with no more of his assiduities. And yet, as he bids her good-bye, leaving behind him a smooth sweep of short velvet for her to remember him by, he seems to linger. 'How is Jacob?' he asks. 'No better.'