"I confess I'm tired," she exclaimed "I seem to have been on my feet for a week," and she put out the tiniest point of a shoe-toe and contemplated it ruefully. "Now, what do you mean, Mr. Pinder, standing there swinging that basket like one of those boats in a fair that make you dizzy to look at them? Can't you find a seat somewhere?" Tom looked all around. He might have found a seat by climbing on the branch of an adjacent tree. Some such thought may have crossed his mind, for by that magic of association that passes the wit of man came to him the couplet that he had read long ago: "Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall," with its answering "If thy heart fail thee, do not climb at all." Tom did not climb. He sat instead on the edge of the garden seat, as far from Dorothy as space permitted. "I wish you wouldn't call me 'Mr. Pinder'," he said. "I never feel quite sure you are not making mock of me." Dorothy had taken a rose from the basket and was looking for leaves to bind it with. "Well you see, you are getting rather too big for me to call you Tom. And besides, you are a man now, and besides, oh!--lots of things." This did not seem very lucid. Tom went on: "I was never called 'Mr. Pinder' in my life till you called me so. Then I was very glad and very proud. It put new thoughts into my mind. It was like a 'new birth,' as the chapel-folk might say. But it has done its work now, and I should like once more to be plain 'Tom' to you." "Well, plain Tom then be it, if that will please you; but we really must be going, or we shall miss Lucy. Hark! many of the people must have left the ground already. I can hear them talking as they go past the mill. Bring along the basket, Tom, and don't spill more than you can help." "I don't think I should take the flowers to Lucy in the field. People would say you favoured Lucy more than other folk's children." "And what do I care what people say; I do like Lucy more than any other girl in the village." "I was not exactly thinking of what you might care about miss. I was thinking more of what Lucy would feel." "Oh! Of course," said Dorothy, not without a suspicion of pettishness in her tone. Really, this young man was too frank. To say exactly what one thinks is no doubt commendable in the abstract. But then we should be careful to think only what will fall pleasingly on the ear, if we wish to please. "Oh! of course," said Dorothy. Tom felt he had blundered. "The air comes very sweet and fresh from the hills" he said, to change the subject. "How clear the stream looks to-night and how softly it warbles over the stones." "Yes," assented Dorothy, "I love the river when its waters are crystal as now; but you know it is so seldom we see it so bright and sparkling. The dye-water from the mill makes it all the colours of the rainbow, but you take care the colours are dirty enough."