"Didn’t you think," asked Baby, "that Mr. Smith—his name is Algernon Vandeleur Smith, he’s the curate—didn’t you think his eyes would drop out of his head? They make me feel quite ill!" They were walking down the flagged churchyard path, and Baby was stamping her small cold feet. She was talking in a high irate voice, regardless of hearers. "Did you ever listen to such a sermon?" She opened her bright eyes very wide and made a fish-like mouth in imitation of the Reverend Algernon: "And now, brethren, shortly, briefly, and in a few words, not wishing to detain you longer, I will endeavour to set before you with conciseness and brevity."—She was a born mimic, and had caught the dreary young divine’s very intonation. Bethune had no laugh for her: his heart was sore. For once the girl’s mood jarred on him. She was quick to feel the shadow of his thoughts. The dimple went out of her cheek, the spring from her step. The icy brilliancy of the day seemed suddenly dim to her. The walk before them, towards which she had been yearning with delicious anticipation, became instantly a grey project, a weariness. This gossamer of early love—it needs but a breath of adverse wind to tear it apart and set it afloat in forlorn shreds, mere flecks to the caprice of the airs; it that has been a fairy bridge for the dance of the sunbeams! For a long while they trudged together in silence. But all at once, Bethune looking down upon her was smitten, not by any hint of her dawning sentiments towards him, but by the consciousness that he must have seemed surly towards a mirthful child. "God knows," he thought heavily, "the world gets sad enough, soon enough, to make it shame to cloud even one moment for the children." Himself, he felt old and sad, and miles away from her happy youth. "So silent?" said he, turning upon her that softened look she loved. She glanced up at him, forcing a smile, but over her frank eyes there was a wet shimmer which she winked away indignantly. Once again, as on that Indian evening when he had seen Lady Gerardine fit her slender hand into the death-prints of the burnt queens, it struck him that here, in this open-hearted, sweet-natured, gay-spirited girl, a man might find a companion for life to help and comfort—a piece of charming, wholesome prose, but ... Raymond Bethune, in his lonely isolated life, had had dreams—dreams that his temper had been too narrow, too severely matter-of-fact, to bring into any connection with his actions. He had dreamed his dream as he had read his book of poetry, to lay it aside without a sigh and take up the moment’s duty, as one lays aside a flower, a thing of fragrance, a passing pleasure, which has no further influence on life.