‘But she worked hard enough burnishing the brass necklace.’ ‘O yes, that shone! tuckers are simply—clean.’ ‘My Lady Eve should have a lady’s-maid.’ ‘Not whilst I am with her. I do all that is needful for her. When she marries she must have one, as she is helpless.’ ‘You think Eve will marry?’ ‘O yes! It is all settled. She has consented.’ He was a little surprised. This had come about very suddenly, and Eve was young. ‘I am glad you are here,’ said Barbara, ‘only you have taken an unfair advantage of me.’ ‘I—Barbara?’ ‘Yes, Jasper, you.’ She looked up into his face with a heightened colour. He had never called her by her plain Christian name before, nor had she thus addressed him, but their hearts understood each other, and a formal title would have been an affectation on either side. ‘I will tell you why,’ said the girl; ‘so do not put on such a puzzled expression. I want to speak to you seriously about a matter that—that—well, Jasper, that makes me wish you had your face in the light and mine in the shade. Where you stand the glare of the sky is behind you, and you can see every change in my face, and that unnerves me. Either you shall come in here, take my place at the tuckers, and let me talk to you through the window, or else I shall move my chair close to the window, and sit with my back to it, and we can talk without watching each other’s face.’ ‘Do that, Barbara. I cannot venture on the tuckers.’ So, laughing nervously, and with her colour changing in her checks, and her lips twitching, she drew her chair close to the window, and seated herself, not exactly with her back to it, but sideways, and turned her face from it. The ground outside was higher than the floor of the parlour, so that Jasper stood above her, and looked down somewhat, not much, on her head, her dark hair so neat and glossy, and smoothly parted. He stooped to the mignonette bed and gathered some of the fragrant delicate little trusses of colourless flowers, and with a slight apology thrust two or three among her dark hair. ‘Putting in tuckers,’ he said. ‘Garnishing the sweetest of heads with the plant that to my mind best symbolises Barbara.’ ‘Don’t,’ she exclaimed, shaking her head, but not shaking the sprigs out of her hair. ‘You are taking unwarrantable liberties, Mr. Jasper.’ ‘I will take no more.’ He folded his arms on the sill. She did not see, but she felt, the flood of love that poured over her bowed head from his eyes. She worked very hard fastening off a thread at the end of a tucker. ‘I also,’ said Jasper, ‘have been desirous of a word with you, Barbara.’ She turned, looked up in his face, then bent her head again over her work. The flies, among them a great bluebottle, were humming in the window; the latter bounced against the glass, and was too stupid to come down and go out at the open sash.