"Oh," she cried, "it is you!" Jock did not know whether to be deeply affronted or to laugh too. "I----thought you might have lost your way," he said, knitting his brows and looking as forbidding as he knew how, by way of correcting the involuntary sentiment that had stolen into his boyish heart. "Then why did not you come to me?" she said, "is not that what you call to spy--to watch when one does not know you are there?" Jock's countenance flushed at this word. "Spy! I never spied upon any one. I thought perhaps you might not be able to get back--so I would not go away out of reach." "I see," she cried, "you meant to be kind but not friendly. Do I say it right? Why will not you be friendly? I have so many things I want to say, and no one, no one! to say them to. What harm would it do if you came out from yourself, and talked with me a little? You are too young to make it any--inconvenience," the girl said. She laughed a little and blushed a little as she said this, eyeing him all the time with frank, open eyes. "I am sixteen; how old are you?" she added, with a quick breath. "Sixteen past," said Jock, with a little emphasis, to show his superiority in age as well as in other things. "Sixteen in a boy means no more than nine or so," she said, with a light disdain, "so you need not have any fear. Oh, come and talk! I have a hundred and more of things to say. It is all so strange. How would you like to plunge in a new world like the sea, and never say what you think of it, or ask any questions, or tell when it makes you laugh or cry?" "I should not mind much. I should neither laugh nor cry. It is only girls that do," said Jock, somewhat contemptuous too. "Well! But then I am a girl. I cannot change my nature to please you," she said. "Sometimes I think I should have liked better to be a boy, for you have not to do the things we have to do--but then when I saw how awkward you were, and how clumsy, and not good for anything"--she pointed these very plain remarks with a laugh between each and a look at Jock, by which she very plainly applied what she said. He did not know at all how to take this. The instinct of a gentleman to betray no angry feeling towards a girl, who was at the same time a lady, contrasted in him with the instinct of a child, scarcely yet aware of the distinctions of sex, to fight fairly for itself; but the former prevailed. And then it was scarcely possible to resist the contagion of the laugh which the damp air seemed to hold suspended, and bring back in curls and wreaths of pleasant sound. So Jock commanded himself and replied with an effort-- "We are just as good for things that we care about as you--but not for girls' things," he added, with another little fling of the mutual contempt which they felt for each other. Then after a pause: "I suppose we may as well go home, for it is getting late; and when it is dark you would be sure to lose your way----"