Two men of the village were sitting with their hats on.  As they said “Good-day” to Eliza, they did not rise or take off their hats, not because they did not feel towards her as a man would who would give this civility, but because they were not in the habit of expressing their feelings in that way.  Another transient caller was old Dr. Nash, and he, looking at Eliza, recognised in a dull way something in her appearance which made him think her a finer woman than he had formerly supposed, and, pulling off his hat, he made her a stiff bow.

Eliza spoke only to Mr. Hutchins:  “I shall be gone about four hours; I am going to the Rexfords to tea.  You’d better look into the dining-room once or twice when supper’s on.”

“All right,” said he, adding, when the clock had had time to tick once, “Miss White.”

And the reason he affixed her name to his promise was the same that had compelled Dr. Nash’s bow—­a sense of her importance growing upon him; but the hotel-keeper observed, what the old doctor did not, that the gown was silk.

“Fine woman that, sir,” he remarked, when she was gone, to anyone who might wish to receive the statement.

“Well,” said one of the men, “I should just think it.”

“She seems,” said Dr. Nash, stiffly, “to be a good girl and a clever one.”

“She isn’t just now what I’d call a gurl,” said the man who had answered first.  “She’s young, I know; but now, if you see her walking about the dining-room, she’s more like a queen than a gurl.”

Without inquiring into the nature of this distinction Dr. Nash got into his buggy.  As he drove down the street under the arching elm trees he soon passed Eliza on her way to the Rexfords, and again he lifted his hat.  Eliza, with grave propriety, returned the salutation.

The big hawthorn tree at the beginning of Captain Rexford’s fence was thickly bedecked with pale scarlet haws.  Eliza opened the gate beside it and turned up the cart road, walking on its grassy edge, concealed from the house by ragged lilac trees.  She preferred this to-day to the open path leading to the central door.  This road brought her to the end of the long front verandah.  Here she perceived voices from the sitting-room, and, listening, thought she heard Principal Trenholme talking.  She went on past the gable of the house into the yard, a sloping straggling bit of ground, enclosed on three sides by the house and its additions of dairies and stables, and on the fourth side bounded by the river.  For once the place seemed deserted by the children.  A birch, the only tree in the enclosure, cast fluttering shadow on the closely cropped sod.  Sunlight sparkled on the river and on the row of tin milk pans set out near the kitchen door.  To this door Eliza went slowly, fanning herself with her handkerchief, for the walk had been warm.  She saw Miss Rexford was in the kitchen alone, attending to some light cookery.