“But I have been very happy,” she went on to say, “for I am so fond of country life, and everything that belongs to it, that the more I have to do with it, the better I like it, and I really begrudge the time that I spend in the city.  You do not know with what pleasure I look forward to helping Miriam get breakfast to-morrow morning.  I consider it a positive lark.  By the way, Mr. Haverley, do you like rolled omelets?”

Ralph declared that he liked everything that was good, and had no doubt that rolled omelets were delicious.

“Then I shall make some,” said Dora, “for I know how to do it.  And I think you said, Mr. Haverley, that the coffee to-night was too strong.”

“A little so, perhaps,” said Ralph, “but it was excellent.”

“Oh, it shall be better in the morning.  I am sure it will be well for one of us to do one thing, and the other another.  I will make the coffee.”

“You are wonderfully kind to do anything at all,” said Ralph, and as he spoke he heard the clock in the house strike ten.  It was agreeable in the highest degree to walk in the moonlight with this charming girl, but he felt that it was getting late; it was long past Miriam’s bedtime, and he wondered why the doctor did not come.

Dora perceived the perturbations of his mind; she knew that he thought it was time for the little party to break up, but did not like to suggest it.  She knew that the natural and proper thing for her to do was to wake up Miriam, and that the two should bid Ralph good-night, and leave him to sit up and wait for the doctor as long as he felt himself called upon to do so, but she was perfectly contented with the present circumstances, and did not wish to change them just yet.  It was a pleasure to her to walk by this tall, broad-shouldered young fellow, who was so handsome and so strong, and in so many ways the sort of man she liked, and to let him know, not so much by her words, as by the incited action of his own intelligence, that she was fond of the things he was fond of, and that she loved the life he led.

As they still walked and talked, the thought came to Dora, and it was a very pleasing one, that she might act another part with this young gentleman; she had played the cook, now for a while she could play the mistress, and she knew she could do it so gently and so wisely that he would like it without perceiving it.  She turned away her face for a moment; she felt that her pleasure in acting the part of mistress of Cobhurst, even for a little time, was flushing it.

“Suppose,” she said, “we walk down to the road, and if we see or hear the doctor coming, we can wait there and save him the trouble of driving in.”

They went out of the Cobhurst gateway, but along the moonlighted highway they saw no approaching spot, nor could they hear the sounds of wheels.

“I really think, Mr. Haverley,” said Dora, turning toward the house, “that I ought to go and arouse Miriam, and then we will retire.  It is a positive shame to keep her out of her bed any longer.”