“Oh, sir,” she said, her face shining with pleasure. “Oh, sir, I protest that even in the genteelest society at the Bath, I never had so pretty a compliment paid to me.” He had paid his compliment to her in a delicate spirit of bantering, so as to make no appeal to her vanity, and he saw that her pleasure was not the result of gratified vanity. “But concerning yourself, my dear,” he cried when he had his fork in his hand, but had as yet touched nothing. “If I was fasting you must be also.” “What, sir, did I omit to say that I returned to my home after your preaching?” she said. “Oh, yes; I got the basket there and the pilchards. My father despises pilchards, but I hope that you----” “I ama practical man, Nelly, and I know, without the need to make a calculation on paper, that you could not be more than a few minutes in your cottage, and that all that time was spent by you over my basket. I know such as you--a hasty mouthful of cake and a spoonful of milk and you say, 'I have dined.' Now I doubt much if you had so much as a spoonful of milk, and therefore I say that unless you face me at this table of stone, I will eat nothing of your store; and I know that that would be the greatest punishment I could inflict upon you. Take your place, madam, at the head of the table.” She protested. “Nay, sir, I brought not enough for two--barely enough to sustain one that is a small feeder until he has the opportunity of sitting down to a regular meal.” “I have spoken,” he said. “I need but a bite! Oh, the long fasting journeys that I have had within the year!” She still hesitated, but when, at last, she seated herself, she did not cause him to think that he had made her feel ill at ease; she adapted herself to the position into which he had forced her, from the moment she sat opposite to him. She forgot for the time that he was the preacher on whom thousands of men and women had hung a couple of hours before, and that she, if she had not been with him, would have been eating in a fisherman's cottage. She had acquired, through her association with the Squire's young ladies, something of their manners. Her gift of quick observation was allied to a capacity to copy what she observed, and being, womanlike, well aware of this fact, she had no reason to feel otherwise than at ease while she ate her share of the pilchards, and made him feel all the time that she was partaking of his hospitality.