“By no means!” He had taken off his hat, and in his regretful sincerity looked handsomer than when his eyes had smiled, concluded Hester, whose senses were rapidly returning. “My name is Gilchrist, and my father’s grounds adjoin those of the parsonage. He had the gate cut between your garden and the orchard, that the clergyman’s family might be as much at home here as ourselves. I hope you will forgive my dog’s misdemeanor, and my heedlessness in not seeing you before he had a chance to frighten you.” Summoning something of his father’s gracious stateliness, he continued, more formally: “Have I the pleasure of addressing Miss Wayt?” Bow and question were for Hetty. Hester’s voice, thin and dissonant, replied with old-fashioned decorum of manner, but in unconventional phrase: “_I_ have the misfortune to be Miss Wayt. This is Mr. Wayt’s wife’s sister, Miss Alling.” It was a queer speech, made queerer by the prim articulation the author deemed proper in the situation. March tried not to see that the subject of the second clause of the introduction flushed deeply, while her mute return of his bow had a serious natural grace he thought charming. When he begged that she would resume her seat, the little roguish curl at the corner of her lips, which he recollected as archly demure, came into play. “We have no chairs to offer, but if you do not object to the best we have to give”—finishing the half invitation by seating herself upon a grass-grown root, jutting out near the trunk of the tree. “The nicest carpet and lounge in the world,” affirmed March, sitting down upon the sward. “Odd, isn’t it, that American men don’t know how to loll on the turf as English do? Our climate is ever so much drier and we have three times as many fair days in the year, and some of us seem to be as loosely put together. But we don’t understand how to fling ourselves down all in a heap that doesn’t look awkward either, and be altogether at ease in genuine Anglican fashion. Even if there are ladies present, an Englishman lies on the grass, and it is considered ‘quite the thing, don’t you know?’ They say the imported American never gets the hang of it, try as he will. A man must be born on the other side or he can’t learn it.” “There may be something in your countryman’s born reverence for women that prevents him from mastering the accomplishment,” said Hetty, a little dryly. March bowed gayly. “Thank you for the implied compliment in the name of American men! I am glad you are getting the benefit of this perfect May day. There, at any rate, we have the advantage of the Mother Country, if she _has_ given us the Maypole and ‘The Queen of the May.’ This is a sour and dubious month in Merry England.” “You have been there, then?” Hester said it abruptly, as she said most things, but the eagerness dashed with longing that gave plaintive cadence to the question, caught March’s ear.