And was she really a coquette, carrying herself steadily along between two lovers, that she smiled just as pleasantly on David, giving him never a cold word, even while the blushes kindled by the soft speeches of Warren Luce still burned upon her cheeks?

I found myself getting confused.  My new studies were very absorbing in their nature, and extremely intricate.  Three books to translate, and never a dictionary!

After patient investigation, I settled down upon the conviction that there was in the heart of our little country-girl one corner of which David’s constant goodness, and earnest, though unspoken love, had given him the entire possession.

I thought thus, because I saw that in her own nature were truth and goodness.  And she was quick of perception.  I was often struck by the shrewdness of her remarks.  I thought the more favorably of her, too, that she was fond of pictures.  Before they came to live in the other part, she had taken a dozen lessons of an itinerant drawing-master.  I had often encountered her in my walks, trying to make a sketch of a tree or a house.  She always tucked it behind her, though, or into her pocket, the minute I came in sight.

It was certainly true that she had not yielded to the fascinations of the Doctor’s boy so readily and so entirely as I had feared.  “The girl has some common sense,” I thought, “some stability,—­and likewise some ideas of the eternal fitness of things.”  For I noticed, with pleasure, one night in Emily’s room, when somebody said, “There comes the Doctor’s boy,” that she got up and closed the door.

She had been singing the old-fashioned hymn commencing,—­

  “On the fair Heavenly Hills.”

The last line,

  “And all the air is Love,”

was repeated.  The music was peculiar,—­the notes rising and falling and rolling over each other like waves.

She had just stopped.  Nobody moved.  The silence was broken only by the rustling of the lilac-bushes, as the night-wind swept over them.

“The whispering of angels!” said Emily, softly.

I was pleased that she closed the door.  It showed that she felt his unfitness to enter our little paradise.  I took heart for David.  And yet it was only the next day that came the crowning with hop-blossoms.

I had returned home early, and was in my own room, waiting for tea.  Casting my eyes towards the garden, I saw Mary Ellen sitting beneath a tree, leaning against the trunk.  Near by was a hop-pole, laden with its green.  And near by, also, stood Warren Luce, holding in his hand a thin, square book.  He had gathered a quantity of the beautiful hop-blossoms and tendrils, and was directing her how to arrange them about her head.  It appeared to be his object to make her look like a picture in his book.  “A little more to the right.  A few leaves about the ear,” I heard him say; and then, “They must drop a little lower on the other side.  In the picture, the tendrils touch the left shoulder.  Now hold the basket full of them, in this way.  The blossoms must be trailing over it, and your right hand upon the handle.  Not so.  Let me show”—­And as he touched her hand to place it in the right position, I almost sprang from my seat, I was so indignant for David.