“Mr. Garth,” repeated Liza, “and maybe you’ll tell me what’s all your hurry about.  Has some one’s horse dropped a shoe, or is this your hooping day, or what, that you don’t know a body now when you meet one in the road?”

“No, no, my lass—­good morning, Liza, I must be off.”

“Very well, Mr. Garth, and if you must, you must. I’m not the one to keep any one ’at doesn’t want to stop; not I, indeed,” said Liza, tossing up her head with an air as of supreme indifference, and turning half on her heel.  “Next time you speak to me, you—­you—­you will speak to me—­mind that.”  And with an expression denoting the triumph of arms achieved by that little outburst of irony and sarcasm combined, Liza tossed the ribbons aside that were pattering her face in the wind, and seemed about to continue her journey.

Her parting shot had proved too much for Mr. Garth.  That young man had stopped a few paces down the road, and between two purposes seemed for a moment uncertain which to adopt; but the impulse of what he thought his love triumphed over the impulse of what proved to be his hate.  Retracing the few steps that lay between him and the girl, he said,—­

“Don’t take it cross, Liza, my lass; if I thought you really wanted to speak to me, I’d stop anywhere for nowt—­that I would.  I’d stop anywhere for nowt; but you always seemed to me over throng with yon Robbie, that you did; but if for certain you really did want me—­that’s to say, want to speak to me—­I’d stop anywhere for nowt.”

The liberal nature of the blacksmith’s offer did not so much impress the acute intelligence of the girl as the fact that Mr. Garth was probably at that moment abroad upon an errand which he had not undertaken from equally disinterested motives.  Concerning the nature of this errand she felt no particular curiosity, but that it was unknown to her, and was being withheld from her, was of itself a sufficient provocation to investigation.

Liza was a simple country wench, but it would be an error to suppose that because she had been bred up in a city more diminutive than anything that ever before gave itself the name, and because she had lived among hand-looms and milking-pails, and had never seen a ball or an opera, worn a mask or a domino, she was destitute of the instinct for intrigue which in the gayer and busier world seems to be the heritage of half her sex.  Putting her head aside demurely, as with eyes cast, down she ran her fingers through one of her loose ribbons, she said softly,—­

“And who says I’m so very partial to Robbie? I never said so, did I?  Not that I say I’m partial to anybody else either—­not that I ay so—­Joseph!”

The sly emphasis which was put upon the word that expressed Liza’s unwillingness to commit herself to a declaration of her affection for some mysterious entity unknown seemed to Mr. Garth to be proof beyond contempt of question that the girl before him implied an affection for an entity no more mysterious than himself.  The blacksmith’s face brightened, and his manner changed.  What had before been almost a supplicating tone, gave place to a tone of secure triumph.