His eyes returned to her expectantly; he was not altogether unused to sounding the cultivated feminine heart, trained to sensibility and susceptible to many a specious sophistry. Naught he had found more efficacious than an appeal for sympathy to those who have sympathy in bulk and on call. The attribution, also, of a motive trenching on cruelty, and unauthorized by fact, was usually wont to occasion a flutter of protest and contrition. Euphemia Sims met his gaze in calm silence. She had intended no mirth at his expense, and if he were minded to evolve it gratuitously he was welcome to his illusion. Aught that she had said had been to return or parry a blow. She spoke advisedly. There was no feigning of gentleness in her, no faltering nor turning back. She stood stanchly ready to abide by her words. She had known no assumption of that pretty superficial feminine _tendresse_, so graceful a garb of identity, and she could not conceive of him as an object of pity because her sarcasm had cut deeper than his own. He had an impression that he had indeed reached primitive conditions. The encounter with an absolute candor shocked his mental prepossessions as a sudden dash of cold water might startle the nerves. He was all at once very tired of the mill, extremely tired of his companion. The very weight of the fishing-rod and its unbaited hook was a burden. He was making haste to take himself off--he hardly knew where--from one weariness of spirit to another. Despite the lesson he had had, that he would receive of her exactly the measure of consideration that he meted out, he could not refrain from a half-mocking intimation as he said, “And do you propose to take up your abode down here, that you linger so long in this watery place,--a nymph, a naiad, or a grace?” He glanced slightingly down the dusky bosky vista. She was not even discomfited by his manner. “I kem down hyar,” she remarked, the interest of her errand paramount for the moment, “I kem down ter the mill ter see ef I couldn’t find some seconds. They make a sort o’ change arter eatin’ white flour awhile.” He was not culinary in his tastes, and he had no idea what “seconds” might be, unless indeed he encountered them in their transmogrified estate as rolls on the table. “And having found them, may I crave the pleasure of escorting you up the hill to the paternal domicile? I observe the shadows are growing very long.” “You-uns may kerry the bag,” she replied, with composure, “an’ I’ll kerry the fishin’-pole.”