“Though I couldn’t resist the temptation to tease you, I quite agree with the Sentinel,” she resumed.  “It really was a very gallant rescue, and I suppose you know I recognize my debt to you.  I was a little too startled to speak about it when you brought my father home, and you went away so fast.”

“The fellows were afraid of being identified; they bolted as soon as they saw me.”

“One didn’t,” Flora pointed out.  “A knife-thrust, like the one you avoided, or a pistol-shot would have obviated any risk they ran.  But of course you hate to be thanked.”

“No,” George replied impulsively; “not by you.”

“I wonder,” she said with an amused air, “why you should make an exception of me?”

“I suppose it lessens my sense of obligation.  I feel I’ve done some little thing to pay you back.”

“I’m not sure that was very happily expressed.  Is it painful to feel that you owe anything to your neighbors?”

George flushed.

“That wasn’t what I meant.  Do you think it’s quite fair to lay traps for me, when you can count on my falling into them?” He turned and pointed to the great stretch of grain that clothed the soil with vivid green.  “Look at your work.  Last fall, all that plowing was strewn with a wrecked and mangled crop; now it’s sown with wheat that will stand the drought.  I was feeling nearly desperate, wondering how I was to master the sandy waste, when you came to the rescue and my troubles melted like the dust in summer rain.  They couldn’t stand before you; you banished them.”

She looked at him rather curiously, and, George thought, with some cause, for he was a little astonished at his outbreak.  This was not the kind of language that was most natural to him.

“I wonder,” she said, “why you should take so much for granted—­I mean in holding me accountable?”

“It’s obvious,” George declared.  “I understand your father; he’s a very generous friend, but the idea of sending me the seed didn’t occur to him in the first place; though I haven’t the least doubt that he was glad to act on it.”

“Ah!” said Flora, “it looks as if you had been acquiring some penetration; you were not so explicit the last time you insisted on thanking me.  Who can have been teaching you?  It seems, however, that I’m still incomprehensible.”

George considered.  It would be undesirable to explain that his enlightenment had come from Edgar, and he wanted to express what he felt.

“No,” he said, in answer to her last remark; “not altogether; but I’ve sometimes felt that there’s a barrier of reserve in you, beyond which it’s hard to get.”

“Do you think it would be worth while to make the attempt?  Suppose you succeeded and found there was nothing on the other side?”

He made a sign of negation, and she watched him with some interest; the man was trying to thrash out his ideas.