"Why you should be afraid of him, I can't think," said Mary, when his retreating steps had ceased to sound on the gravel. "He is delightful!" "I don't like to look stupid," said Letty. "I shouldn't mind how stupid I looked so long as I was learning," returned Mary. "I wonder you never told me about him!" "I couldn't talk about Cousin Godfrey," said Letty; and a pause followed. "How good of him to come to us again!" said Mary. "What will he read to us?" "Most likely something out of a book you never heard of before, and can't remember the name of when you have heard it--at least that's the way with me. I wonder if he will talk to you, Mary? I should like to hear how Cousin Godfrey talks to girls." "Why, you know how he talks to you," said Mary. "Oh, but I am only Cousin Letty! He can talk anyhow to me." "By your own account he talks to you in the best possible way." "Yes; I dare say; but--" "But what?" "I can't help wishing sometimes he would talk a little nonsense. It would be such a relief. I am sure I should understand better if he would. I shouldn't be so frightened at him then." "The way I generally hear gentlemen talk to girls makes me ashamed--makes me feel as if I must ask, 'Is it that you are a fool, or that you take that girl for one?' They never talk so to me." Letty sat pulling a jonquil to pieces. She looked up. Her eyes were full of thought, but she paused a long time before she spoke, and, when she did, it was only to say: "I fear, Mary, I should take any man for a fool who took me for anything else." Letty was a rather small and rather freckled girl, with the daintiest of rounded figures, a good forehead, and fine clear brown eyes. Her mouth was not pretty, except when she smiled--and she did not smile often. When she did, it was not unfrequently with the tears in her eyes, and then she looked lovely. In her manner there was an indescribably taking charm, of which it is not easy to give an impression; but I think it sprang from a constitutional humility, partly ruined into a painful and haunting sense of inferiority, for which she imagined herself to blame. Hence there dwelt in her eyes an appeal which few hearts could resist. When they met another's, they seemed to say: "I am nobody; but you need not kill me; I am not pretending to be anybody. I will try to do what you want, but I am not clever. Only I am sorry for it. Be gentle with me." To Godfrey, at least, her eyes spoke thus. In ten minutes or so he reappeared, far at the other end of the yew-walk, approaching slowly, with a book, in which he seemed thoughtfully searching as he came. When they saw him the girls instinctively moved farther from each other, making large room for him between them, and when he came up he silently took the place thus silently assigned him. "I am going to try your brains now, Letty," he said, and tapped the book with a finger.