“Thank you, but I prefer to do it myself,” Miss Meg said, with freezing dignity.

She did not look at him, but there was a certain tightness about her lips that made him know the light in her clear young, eyes was a scornful one.

He did not offer again, but sat and watched her pack up the things with an untranslatable look on his face.  When she had almost finished he took something out of his pocket.

“I have to give you this again,” he said, and handed her the blue length of ribbon, folded smoothly, but showing the crease where it had been tied.

She took it without lifting her eyes, crushed it up in her hand, and slipped it into her pocket.

“I had almost hoped you would say I might keep it, in spite of everything,” he said, “just as a talisman against the future, but your lips are too severe, Miss for me to cherish the hope longer.”

“It would be as useless as it has been,” she said stiffly.  Her hands moved nervously, however, and she wrapped up the remains of a duck and a jam tart together.

“Then I am not to have another chance?” he said.

“It would be no use,” Meg repeated, gathering up bananas and oranges with a heightened colour.

He does not realize how wicked he has been, he thinks he ought to be forgiven at once was her thought.

He emptied the billy slowly on the ground, he put on its blackened lid and tied the newspaper around it.  Then he looked at her again, and the way her soft hair fell on her forehead made him think of his young dead sister.

“I beg you to give it to me again, little Miss Meg,” he said.

Meg’s heart and head had a rapid battle; the former was tender and charitable, and bade her take the little ribbon and give it to him instantly; the latter said he had sinned greatly, and she must show him her disapproval by her manner, even if she yielded what he asked her in the end.  The head won.

“My influence is evidently useless—­that bit of ribbon would make no difference in the future,” she said very coldly.

He leaned back against the tree and yawned, as if the subject had no more interest for him.

“Ah well,” he said, “I dare say you are right.”  Meg felt a little taken down.

“Of course, if you really want the ribbon you can have it,” she said loftily.  She took it from her pocket and tendered it to him.

But he made no effort to take it.

“Keep it to tie your hair again, little girl,” he said; “after all, I don’t suppose it would be any use.”

Meg continued her packing with burning cheeks, and he filled up his pipe and smoked it, watching her idly the while.

“It’s an odd thing,” he said, more as if making an observation than addressing her, “but the gentlest-looking women are nearly always the hardest.”

Meg opened her mouth to speak, but found nothing to say, so closed it again and began to count Mrs. Hassal’s forks for the fourth time.