A while ago I tried to read; but a private vexation of my own—­a small new one—­interleaved with its details each page of the story, and made nonsense of it.  I have shut the volume, therefore, and, with my hat tilted over my eyes, and my cheek on my hand, am watching the long blue dragon-flies, and the numberless small peoples that inhabit the summer air.  All at once, I hear some one coming, crashing and pushing through the woody undergrowth.  Perhaps it is Algy come to say that he has changed his mind, and that he will not go after all!  No! it is only Mr. Musgrave.  I am a little disappointed, but, as my fondness for my own company is always of the smallest, I am able to smile a sincere welcome.

“It is you, is it?” I say, with a little intimate nod.  “How did you know where I was?”

“Barbara told me.”

“Barbara, indeed!” (laughing).  “I wish father could hear you.”

“I am very glad he does not.”

“And so you found her at home?” I say, with a feeling of pleased curiosity, as to the details of the interview. (He cannot well have volunteered the abbey already, can he?)

“I suppose I may come in,” he says, hardly waiting my permission to jump into the punt, which, however, by reason of the noble broadness of its bottom, is enabled to bid defiance to any such shock.  “She was making a flannel petticoat for an old woman,” he goes on, sitting down opposite me, and looking at me from under his hat-brim, with gravely shining eyes; “herring-boning, she called it.  She has been teaching me how to herring-bone, I like Barbara.”

“How kind of you!” I say, ironically, and yet a little gratified too.  “And does she return the compliment, may I ask?”

He nods.

“Yes, I think so.”

“She would like you better still if you were to lose all your money, and one of your legs, and be marked by the small-pox,” I say, thoughtfully; “to be despised, and out at elbows, and down in the world, is the sure way to Barbara’s heart.”

I had meant to have drawn for him a pleasant and yet most true picture of her sweet disinterestedness, but his uneasy vanity takes it amiss.

“As it entails being enrolled among the blind and lame,” he says, smiling sarcastically, and flushing a little, “I am afraid I shall never get there.”

A moment ago I had felt hardly less than sisterly toward him.  Now I look at him with a disgustful and disapprobative eye.  What a very great deal of alteration he needs, and, with that face, and his abbey, and all his rooks to back it, how very unlikely he is to get it!  Well, I at least will do my best!

We both remain quiet for a few moments.  Vick sits at the end of the punt, a shiver of excitement running all over her little white body, her black nose quivering, and one lip slightly lifted by a tooth, as she gazes with eager gravity at the distant wild-ducks flying along in a row, with outstretched—­necks, making their pleasant quacks.  How low they fly; so low that their feet splash in the water, that makes a bright spray-hue in the sun!