LITMIR.BIZ

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the white of Betty's dress, a shrill point of light, into an eye a hundred yards away. The eye's owner, with true rustic finesse, drew back into the wood's shadow, shaded one eye with a brown rustic hand, looked again, and began a detour which landed the rustic boots, all silently, behind the shed, at a spot where a knot-hole served as frame for the little picture. The rustic eye was fitted to the knot-hole while Vernon holding Betty's hand gazed in Betty's face, and decided that this was no time to analyse his sensations.

      Neither heard the furtive rustic tread, or noted the gleam of the pale rustic eye.

      The labourer shook his head as he hurried quickly away. He had daughters of his own, and the Rector had been kind when one of those daughters had suddenly come home from service, ill, and with no prospect of another place.

      "A-holdin' of hands and a-castin' of sheep's eyes," said he. "We knows what that's the beginnings of! Well, well, youth's the season for silliness, but there's bounds—there's bounds. And all of a mornin' so early too. Lord above knows what it wouldn't be like of a evenin'." He shook his head again, and made haste.

      Vernon had forced his eyes to leave the face of Betty.

      "Your fortune," he was saying, "is, curiously enough, just one of those fortunes I was speaking of. You will have great chances of happiness, if you have the courage to take them. You will cross the sea. You've never travelled, have you?"

      "No,—never further than Torquay; I was at school there, you know; and London, of course. But I should love it. Isn't it horrid to think that one might grow quite old and never have been anywhere or done anything?"

      "That depends on oneself, doesn't it? Adventures are to the adventurous."

      "Yes, that's all very well—girls can't be adventurous."

      "Yes,—it's the Prince who sets out to seek his fortune, isn't it? The Princess has to sit at home and wait for hers to come to her. It generally does if she's a real Princess."

      "But half the fun must be the seeking for it," said Betty.

      "You're right," said he, "it is."

      The labourer had reached the park-gate. His pace had quickened to the quickening remembrance of his own daughter, sitting at home silent and sullen.

      "Do you really see it in my hand?" asked Betty,—"about my crossing the sea, I mean."

      "It's there; but it depends on yourself, like everything else."

      "I did ask my step-father to let me go," she said, "after that first day, you know, when you said I ought to study in Paris."

      "And he wouldn't, of course?"

      "No; he said Paris was a wicked place. It isn't really, is it?"

      "Every place is wicked," said he, "and every place is good. It's all as one takes things."

      The Rectory gate clicked sharply as it swung to behind the labourer. The Rectory gravel scrunched beneath the labourer's boots.

      Yes, the Master was up; he could be seen.

      The heavy boots were being rubbed against the birch broom that, rooted at Kentish back doors, stands to receive on its purple twigs the scrapings of Kentish clay from rustic feet.

      "You have the artistic lines very strongly marked," Vernon was saying. "One, two, three—yes, painting—music perhaps?"

      "I am very fond of music," said Betty, thinking of the hour's daily struggle with the Mikado and the Moonlight Sonata. "But three arts. What could the third one be?" Her thoughts played for an instant with unheard-of triumphs achieved behind footlights—rapturous applause, showers of bouquets.

      "Whatever it is, you've enormous talent for it," he said; "you'll find out what it is in good time. Perhaps it'll be something much more important than the other two put together, and perhaps you've got even more talent for it than you have for others."

      "But there isn't any other talent that I can think of."

      "I can think of a few. There's the stage,—but it's not that, I fancy, or not exactly that. There's literature—confess now, don't you write poetry sometimes when you're all alone at night? Then there's the art of being amusing, and the art of being—of being liked."

      "Shall I be successful in any of the arts?"

      "In one, certainly."

      "Ah," said Betty, "if I could only go to Paris!"

      "It's not always necessary to go to Paris for success in one's art," he said.

      "But I want to go. I'm sure I could do better there."

      "Aren't you satisfied with your present Master?"

      "Oh!"—It was a cry of genuine distress, of heartfelt disclaim. "You know I didn't mean that! But you won't always be here, and when you've gone—why then—"

      Again he had to control the involuntary movement of his left arm.

      "But I'm not going for months yet. Don't let us cross a bridge till we come to it. Your head-line promises all sorts of wonderful things. And your heart-line—" he turned her hand more fully to the light.

      In the Rector's study the labourer was speaking, standing shufflingly on the margin of the Turkey carpet. The Rector listened, his hand on an open folio where fat infants peered through the ornamental initials.

      "And so I come straight up to you, Sir, me being a father and you the same, Sir, for all the difference betwixt our ways in life. Says I to myself, says I, and bitter hard I feels it too, I says: 'George,' says I, 'you've got a daughter as begun that way, not a doubt of it—holdin' of hands and sittin' close alongside, and you know what's come to her!'"

      The Rector shivered at the implication.

      "Then I says, says I: 'Like as not the Rector won't thank you for interferin'. Least said soonest mended,' says I."

      "I'm very much obliged to you," said the Rector difficultly, and his hand shook on Ambrosius's yellow page.

      "You see, Sir," the man's tone held all that deferent apology that truth telling demands, "gells is gells, be they never so up in the world, all the world over, bless their hearts; and young men is young men, d—n them, asking your pardon, Sir, I'm sure, but the word slipped out. And I shouldn't ha' been easy if anything had have gone wrong with Miss, God bless her, all along of the want of a word in season. Asking your pardon, Sir, but even young ladies is flesh and blood, when it comes to the point. Ain't they now?" he ended appealingly.

      The Rector spoke with an obvious effort, got his hand off the page and closed the folio.

      "You've done quite right, George," he said, "and I'm greatly obliged to you. Only I do ask you to keep this to yourself. You wouldn't have liked it if people had heard a thing like that about your Ruby before—I mean when she was at home."

      He replaced the two folios on the shelf.

      "Not me, Sir," George answered. "I'm mum, I do assure you, Sir. And if I might make so bold, you just pop on your hat and step acrost directly minute. There's that little hole back of the shed what I told you of. You ain't only got to pop your reverend eye to that there, and you'll see for yourself as I ain't give tongue for no dragged scent."

      "Thank you, George," said the Rector, "I will. Good morning. God bless you."

      The formula came glibly, but it was from the lips only that it came.

      Lizzie—his white innocent Lily-girl! In a shed—a man, a stranger, holding her hand, his arm around her, his eyes—his lips perhaps, daring—

      The Rector was half way down his garden drive.

      "Your heart-line," Vernon was saying, "it's a little difficult. You will be deeply beloved."

      To have one's fortune told is disquieting. To keep silence during the telling deepens the disquiet curiously. It seemed good to Betty to laugh.

      "Soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor," she said, "which am I going to marry, kind gipsy?"

      "I don't believe the gipsies who say they can see marriage in a hand," he answered gravely, and Betty feared he had thought her flippant, or even vulgar; "what

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