I addressed the same remark to Miss Joey that night at tea.

“The girl,” said she, “is an innocent little country-girl.  She’s got a good skin and a handsome set of teeth.  But there’s no need of her findin’ out her good looks, unless you men-folks put her up to ’t.”

This I of course took to myself, David being out of the question.

An innocent little country-girl!  And so she was.  She brought to mind damask roses, and apple-blossoms, and red rosebuds, and modest violets, and stars and sunbeams, and all the freshness and sweetness of early morning in the country.  A delicious little innocent country-girl!  Poor David! who could have guessed that you were to be the means of letting in upon her benighted mind the secret of her own beauty?

Anybody who has travelled in the country has noticed two kinds of country-girls.  The first are green-looking and brazen-faced, staring at you like great yellow buttercups, and are always ready to tell all they know.  The others are shy.  They look up at you modestly, with their blue or their brown eyes, and answer your questions in few words.  Of this last kind was Mary Ellen.  She looked up with brown eyes,—­not dark brown, but light,—­hazel, perhaps.

And those brown, or hazel, or grayish eyes looked up to some purpose,—­as David, if he had had the gift of speech, might have testified.  But a man may tell a good deal and never use his tongue at all.  The eyes, for instance, or even the cheeks, can talk, and are full as likely not to tell lies.

It might have been two months, perhaps, after the other half was let, that I heard Mrs. Lane say one day,—­

“Joey, there’s an alteration in David.”

“For better or wuss?” calmly inquired that maiden.

I did not hear the reply, but I had seen the alteration.  In fact, I had noticed it from the beginning, and had come to the conclusion that the mischief was done the first day,—­that his heart somehow got a twist in the screwing-up of the bed-cord,—­that it received every one of the blows which those white arms were aiming at the insensible wood.

It was a case which had vastly interested me.  I mean that it was quite in my line, detecting a man’s secret in his countenance.  I was glad of the practice.

Mary Ellen knew, too; and yet she had received no help from the profession.  Only an innocent little country-girl!  ’Twas her natural penetration.  What a pity women can’t be lawyers, they have so much to start with!

Poor David!  He wasn’t sensible of what had befallen him.  How should he be?  He didn’t know why he smarted up his dress, why Bay-fishing wasn’t profitable, or why working on the land agreed with him best.  He hadn’t even found out, as late as June, why he liked to have her bring out the luncheon-basket to the mowers.  But before the autumn he had discovered his own secret.  He knew very well, then, why he thought it a good plan for Mary Ellen to come in and pare apples with Miss Joey at the halves.