"Oh! yes you do! If you're a man, you _must_. You'll learn a lot of new things--you'll keep straight, because you'll have plenty to do. Why, it will 'hatch you over again, and hatch, you different,' as somebody said. You'll see." He looked at her, trying hard to catch her expression in the dusk. "And if I do come back different, perhaps--perhaps--soom day you'll not be ashamed to be seen wi' me? Look here, Miss Laura. From the first time I set eyes on you--from that day you came up--that Sunday--I haven't been able to settle to a thing. I felt, right enough, I wasn't fit to speak to you. And yet I'm your--well, your kith and kin, doan't you see? There can't be no such tremendous gap atween us as all that. If I can just manage myself a bit, and find the work that suits me, and get away from these fellows here, and this beastly farm----" "Ah!--have you been quarrelling with Daffady all day?" She looked for him to fly out. But he only stared, and then turned away. "O Lord! what's the good of talking?" he said, with an accent that startled her. She rose from her seat. "Are you sorry I came to talk to you? You didn't deserve it--did you?" Her voice was the pearliest, most musical, and yet most distant of things. He rose, too--held by it. "And now you must just go and make a man of yourself. That's what you have to do--you see? I wish papa was alive. He'd tell you how--I can't. But if you forget your music, it'll be a sin--and if you send me your song to write out for you, I'll do it. And tell Polly I'll come and see her again some day. Now good-night! They'll be locking up if I don't hurry home." But he stood on the step, barring the way. "I say, give me something to take with me," he said hoarsely. "What's that in your hat?" "In my hat?" she said, laughing--(but if there had been light he would have seen that her lips had paled). "Why, a bunch of buttercups. I bought them at Whinthorpe yesterday." "Give me one," he said. "Give you a sham buttercup? What nonsense!" "It's better than nothing," he said doggedly, and he held out his hand. She hesitated; then she took off her hat and quietly loosened one of the flowers. Her golden hair shone in the dimness. Mason never took his eyes off her little head. He was keeping a grip on himself that was taxing a whole new set of powers--straining the lad's unripe nature in wholly new ways. She put the flower in his hand. "There; now we're friends again, aren't we? Let me pass, please--and good-night!" He moved to one side, blindly fighting with the impulse to throw his powerful arms round her and keep her there, or carry her across the bridge--at his pleasure. But her light fearlessness mastered him. He let her go; he watched her figure on the steps, against the moonlight between the oaks overhead. "Good-night!" she dropped again, already far away--far above him. The young man felt a sob in his throat.