‘Kiomi! what a splendid panther she is!’ cries Heriot; and I:  ’Teeth and claws, and a skin like a burnt patch on a common!  Mabel’s like a wonderful sunflower.’

’Butter and eggs! old Richie, and about as much fire as a rushlight.  If the race were Fat she ‘d beat the world.’

’Heriot, I give you my word of honour, the very look of her ’s eternal Summer.  Kiomi rings thin—­she tinkles; it ’s the difference between metal and flesh.’

’Did she tinkle, as you call it, when that fellow Destrier, confound him! touched her?’

‘The little cat!  Did you notice Mabel’s blush?’

’How could I help it?  We’ve all had a dozen apiece.  You saw little Kiomi curled up under the hop and briony?’

‘I took her for a dead jackdaw.’

’I took her for what she is, and she may slap, scream, tear, and bite, I ’ll take her yet-and all her tribe crying thief, by way of a diversion.  She and I are footed a pair.’

His impetuosity surpassed mine so much that I fell to brooding on the superior image of my charmer.  The result was, I could not keep away from her.  I managed to get home with leaden limbs.  Next day I was back at Dipwell.

Such guilt as I have to answer for I may avow.  I made violent love to this silly country beauty, and held every advantage over her other flatterers.  She had met me on the evening of the great twenty-first, she and a line of damsels dressed in white and wearing wreaths, and I had claimed the privilege of saluting her.  The chief superintendent of the festivities, my father’s old cook, Monsieur Alphonse, turned twilight into noonday with a sheaf of rockets at the moment my lips brushed her cheek.  It was a kiss marred; I claimed to amend it.  Besides, we had been bosom friends in childhood.  My wonder at the growth of the rose I had left but an insignificant thorny shoot was exquisite natural flattery, sweet reason, to which she could not say nonsense.  At each step we trod on souvenirs, innocent in themselves, had they recurred to childish minds.  The whisper, ’Hark! it’s sunset, Mabel, Martha Thresher calls,’ clouded her face with stormy sunset colours.  I respected Martha even then for boldly speaking to me on the girl’s behalf.  Mrs. Waddy’s courage failed.  John Thresher and Mark Sweetwinter were overcome by my father’s princely prodigality; their heads were turned, they appeared to have assumed that I could do no wrong.  To cut short the episode, some one wrote to the squire in uncouth English, telling him I was courting a country lass, and he at once started me for the Continent.  We had some conversation on money before parting.  The squire allowed me a thousand a year, independent of my own income.  He counselled prudence, warned me that I was on my trial, and giving me his word of honour that he should not spy into my Bank accounts, desired me to be worthy of the trust reposed in me.  Speculation he forbade.  I left him satisfied with the assurance that I meant to make my grand tour neither as a merchant, a gambler, nor a rake, but simply as a plain English gentleman.