Before Miss Anna fell asleep that night, she had resolved to tell Harriet.  Every proposal of marriage is known at least to three people.  The distinction in Miss Anna’s conduct was not in telling, but in not telling until she had actually been asked.

Two mornings later Ambrose was again walking through his hall.  There is one compensation for us all in the large miseries of life—­we no longer feel the little ones.  His experience in his suit for Miss Anna’s hand already seemed a trifle to Ambrose, who had grown used to bearing worse things from womankind.  Miss Anna was not the only woman in the world, he averred, by way of swift indemnification.  Indeed, in the very act of deciding upon her, he had been thinking of some one else.  The road of life had divided equally before him:  he had chosen Miss Anna as a traveller chooses the right fork; the left fork remained and he was now preparing to follow that:  it led to Miss Harriet Crane.

As Ambrose now paced his hallway, revolving certain details connected with his next venture and adventure, the noise of an approaching carriage fell upon his ear, and going to the front door he recognized the brougham of Mrs. Conyers.  But it was Miss Harriet Crane who leaned forward at the window and bowed smilingly to him as he hurried out.

“How do you do, Mr. Webb?” she said, putting out her hand and shaking his cordially, at the same time giving him a glance of new-born interest.  “You know I have been threatening to come out for a long time.  I must owe you an enormous bill for pasturage,” she picked up her purse as she spoke, “and I have come to pay my debts.  And then I wish to see my calf,” and she looked into his eyes very pleasantly.

“You don’t owe me anything,” replied Ambrose.  “What is grass?  What do I care for grass?  My mind is set on other things.”

He noticed gratefully how gentle and mild she looked; there was such a beautiful softness about her and he had had hardness enough.  He liked her ringlets:  they were a novelty; and there hung around her, in the interior of the carriage, a perfume that was unusual to his sense and that impressed him as a reminder of her high social position.  But Ambrose reasoned that if a daughter of his neighbor could wed a Meredith, surely he ought to be able to marry a Crane.

“If you want to see the calf,” he said, but very reluctantly, “I’ll saddle my horse and we’ll go over to the back pasture.”

“Don’t saddle your horse,” objected Harriet, opening the carriage door and moving over to the far cushion, “ride with me.”

He had never ridden in a brougham, and as he got in very nervously and awkwardly, he reversed his figure and tried to sit on the little front seat on which lay Harriet’s handkerchief and parasol.

“Don’t ride backwards, Mr. Webb,” suggested Harriet.  “Unless you are used to it, you are apt to have a headache,” and she tapped the cushion beside her as an invitation to him.  “Now tell me about my calf,” she said after they were seated side by side.