Mark’s, to talk with the young rector and know “what his intentions were.” “You have none?” he said, fixing his mild eyes reproachfully upon his clergyman, who recoiled a little beneath the gaze. “Then, if you have no intentions, my advice to you is that you quit it and let the gal alone, or you’ll ruin her, if she ain’t spoilt already, as some of the women folks say she is. It don’t do no gal any good to have a chap, and ’specially a minister, gallivantin’ after her, as I must say you’ve been after this one for the last few weeks. She’s a pretty little creeter, and I don’t blame you for liking her. It makes my old blood stir faster when she comes purring around me, with her soft ways and winsome face, and so I don’t wonder at you, but when you say you’ve no intentions, I blame you greatly. You or’to have. Excuse my plainness; I’m an old man, and I like my minister, and don’t want him to go wrong; and then I feel for her, left all alone by all her folks; more’s the shame to them, and more’s the harm to you, to tangle up her affections as you are doing if you are not in earnest; and so I speak for her just as I should want some one to speak for Anna!” The old man’s voice trembled a little here, for it had been a wish of his that Anna should occupy the parsonage, and he had at first felt a little resentment against the gay young creature who seemed to have supplanted her, but he was over that now, and in all honesty of heart he spoke both for Lucy’s interest and that of his clergyman. And Arthur listened to him respectfully, feeling when he was gone that he merited the rebuke,—that he had not been guiltless in the matter,—that if he did not mean to marry Lucy Harcourt he should let her alone. And he would, he said,—he would not go to Prospect Hill again for two whole weeks, nor visit at the cottages where he was sure to find her; he would keep himself at home; and he did, and shut himself up among his books, not even going to make a pastoral call on Lucy when he heard that she was sick. And so Lucy came to him, looking dangerously charming in her blue riding-habit with the white feather streaming from her hat. Very prettily she pouted, too, as she chided him for his neglect, and asked why he had not been to see her nor anybody;—there was the Widow Hobbs, and Mrs. Briggs, and those miserable Donelsons, whom he had not been near for a fortnight. “What is the reason?” she asked, beating her foot upon the carpet and tapping the end of her riding-whip upon the sermon he was writing. “Are you displeased with me, Arthur,” she continued, her eyes filling with tears as she saw the expression of his face. “Have I done anything wrong; I am so sorry if I have.”