Priscilla of the Good Intent, as she came down the street, was no way out of keeping--so the kindly gossips said, standing each at her sunlit door--with the gardens and the weather. For it was true that not men only, but women, were reminded always of a flower when their eyes fell on Priscilla; and each was apt to choose his own favourite flower as Cilla’s namesake. The village parliament, made up of men and women both, is seldom wrong when it passes judgment on a neighbour; and there was none in Garth who would deny off-hand that Priscilla of the Good Intent was rightly named, thanks to the title of the farm on which her father, and his fathers before him, had laboured thankfully. “There goes slim Miss Good Intent,” said one cottager to another, across the quickset hedge that parted them. “Ay! Sunshine all along the street,” the other answered. “Trust she’ll fall into a good man’s hands; for into some hands she’ll fall soon, or else a lad will just reach up and pluck her.” Priscilla had smiled and nodded to them as she passed--nodded and smiled, indeed, the length of Garth Street, as if she were the lady of the village. She was no less, indeed, for she had that simple pride which knows its station and disdains no greeting on life’s highroad. Unspoiled as a primrose, opening to the warmth of spring, was Priscilla; and it seemed the pity of life that she should ever have to meet contrary winds. Billy the Fool, at the extreme end of Garth, was passing the time of day with David the Smith, as his wont was; for the two were rather like an elder and a younger brother, and sought each other out by instinct. It was two weeks and a day since Billy had dropped his victim into a bed of growing nettles, and neither he nor David had spoken of the matter since--the blacksmith, because he was too fastidious, in a rough fashion, when a rival was in case; the natural, because he forgot such trifles until the season for remembrance came. Reuben Gaunt, for his part, had kept silence, and had thanked heaven, in his own random way, that the jest of his sitting down among the nettles was not common gossip now in Garth. For Reuben hated to be laughed at, as the half and between men of this world always shrink from the laughter of their neighbours. “The birds are all a-mating and a-building, David the Smith,” said Billy. “Cannot ye hear the throstles calling to the hen-birds?” “Ay,” growled David, a sudden anger coming to him; “but ye and me are no way mated, Billy the Fool. What ails us, lad?” “Life ails us,” said Billy unexpectedly. “We’re over slow and overpleasant, David. Chase ’em and have ’em, David the Smith--that’s how I’ve seen the bird-folk go a-wooing. Te-he, there’s Miss Priscilla!” he broke off, and seemed about to run and greet her, in his friendly, dog-like way, when a second figure came into the street from the bridle-track that led to Thorlburn.