The afternoon sun was declining swiftly when the party prepared to leave the beautiful cove. Many of the elder people had gone, Mrs. Sanford among them, the worthy dame having first come to the top of the bank, and poured out a flood of directions to her daughter, to all of which, an impartial historian is compelled to add, Patty gave not the slightest heed. A rope had been fastened to a tree standing near the head of the path leading up the embankment, and supplied the place of the broken rail. When Patty was ready, a discussion arose how she should be got up the steep. Putnam cut it short by taking her, blushing as a modest maiden should, in his arms, and climbing up with her, she assisting by clinging to the rope. "You are something of a load," he said, puffing as they reached the top. "I shall be as heavy as mother some day, I don't doubt," she replied demurely; "but it isn't grateful of you to speak of it, when I pulled you up by the rope." "You are not the first lady who has pulled a man up by a rope," he replied, tucking her into the carriage with great tenderness; "but they generally do it by means of the hangman." CHAPTER VI. CHIT-CHAT. Three carriages followed in succession the homeward road; the first contained Patty and Putnam; the second Clarence Toxteth and Miss Purdy; the third, Burleigh Blood and Flossy. Young Blood found himself unexpectedly at his ease with his companion. The awe he felt for her as a stranger, and because of her quaint speech, had largely worn away. Still he regarded her rather doubtfully, as one looks at something dangerous to handle. Her tiny figure, her quick, nervous motions, reminded him constantly of a humming-bird, and he had a fearful if vague sense of the danger of crushing her by the mere force of his huge presence. The great honest fellow, almost a giant, could have taken her up with one hand, his gentlest movements seeming overpoweringly forcible when exerted in behalf of his _petite_ companion; and of this he was unpleasantly conscious.