Fancy had settled her plan of emotion.  To reproach Dick?  O no, no.  “I am in great trouble,” said she, taking what was intended to be a hopelessly melancholy survey of a few small apples lying under the tree; yet a critical ear might have noticed in her voice a tentative tone as to the effect of the words upon Dick when she uttered them.

“What are you in trouble about?  Tell me of it,” said Dick earnestly.  “Darling, I will share it with ’ee and help ’ee.”

“No, no:  you can’t!  Nobody can!”

“Why not?  You don’t deserve it, whatever it is.  Tell me, dear.”

“O, it isn’t what you think!  It is dreadful:  my own sin!”

“Sin, Fancy! as if you could sin!  I know it can’t be.”

“’Tis, ’tis!” said the young lady, in a pretty little frenzy of sorrow.  “I have done wrong, and I don’t like to tell it!  Nobody will forgive me, nobody! and you above all will not! . . .  I have allowed myself to—­to—­fl—­”

“What,—­not flirt!” he said, controlling his emotion as it were by a sudden pressure inward from his surface.  “And you said only the day before yesterday that you hadn’t flirted in your life!”

“Yes, I did; and that was a wicked story!  I have let another love me, and—­”

“Good G—!  Well, I’ll forgive you,—­yes, if you couldn’t help it,—­yes, I will!” said the now dismal Dick.  “Did you encourage him?”

“O,—­I don’t know,—­yes—­no.  O, I think so!”

“Who was it?” A pause.  “Tell me!”

“Mr. Shiner.”

After a silence that was only disturbed by the fall of an apple, a long-checked sigh from Dick, and a sob from Fancy, he said with real austerity—­

“Tell it all;—­every word!”

“He looked at me, and I looked at him, and he said, ’Will you let me show you how to catch bullfinches down here by the stream?’ And I—­wanted to know very much—­I did so long to have a bullfinch!  I couldn’t help that and I said, ‘Yes!’ and then he said, ‘Come here.’  And I went with him down to the lovely river, and then he said to me, ’Look and see how I do it, and then you’ll know:  I put this birdlime round this twig, and then I go here,’ he said, ’and hide away under a bush; and presently clever Mister Bird comes and perches upon the twig, and flaps his wings, and you’ve got him before you can say Jack’—­something; O, O, O, I forget what!”

“Jack Sprat,” mournfully suggested Dick through the cloud of his misery.

“No, not Jack Sprat,” she sobbed.

“Then ’twas Jack Robinson!” he said, with the emphasis of a man who had resolved to discover every iota of the truth, or die.

“Yes, that was it!  And then I put my hand upon the rail of the bridge to get across, and—­That’s all.”

“Well, that isn’t much, either,” said Dick critically, and more cheerfully.  “Not that I see what business Shiner has to take upon himself to teach you anything.  But it seems—­it do seem there must have been more than that to set you up in such a dreadful taking?”