This was an unmistakably humorous allusion, and the girl once more flashed her white teeth in a pretty smile.  Such a reception of his not very striking remarks put the young man at his ease, and he became composed enough to observe delicately the face of his new acquaintance.  He had but little time, for of course he could not stand for long babbling stupidities with a country girl.  The face was strong and dark, with composed, full lips, and a dusky glow in the cheeks.  The eyes which had at first put him to such confusion looked liquid and strangely attractive when the light of laughter was in them.  Mr. Ellington had fallen in with a beautiful girl.  He did not formulate any opinion on the subject all at once, but he prolonged the conversation into the second five minutes.  Then he said casually, “I’ve not seen you passing this way before,” and the dark young lady made answer, with complete simplicity, “No, but I always come through here on Thursday afternoons as I go to my aunt’s over at the Dean.”

Mr. Ellington said “good-bye” at last, and the tall, strong figure of the girl disappeared round a bluff of the shrubbery, her feet lighting on the gravel with crisp, decided firmness.

It was not an exciting incident, but in truth the things that alter lives, and give us our strongest emotions, do really happen in fashions the reverse of picturesque.  A couple of young folk had exchanged a score or so of vapid words, yet before many weeks had gone several people had reason for wishing the trivial interview had never been.

The girl thought but once more about the matter.  On her way back the clink of the closing wicket brought young Ellington to her mind again, and she said to herself, “What a nice free lad the young squire is!  They were saying he was a kind of close fellow with a bad temper.  He doesn’t look like that.  I wonder what makes him flatten his hair down so funny?  He asked me about next Thursday.”  And there Miss Mary Casely ceased her maiden meditations, and walked on with her sharp step, and with a mind vacant of all coherent thought, as only the truly rustic mind can be.  Presently she passed a row of one-storied cottages which ran along the edge of the low cliff, and she tapped at the door of a somewhat larger house which stood in a dignified manner a little apart from the fishermen’s cottages.  She heard a strong voice say, “Oh!  It’s her, back again.”  Then a heavy step crunched the sand of the flooring, and made the windows rattle in their frames.  The door opened, and the same deep voice said, “Ye’ve getten here then, hinny.  What kind of a night is it?”

The man stooped low to escape the lintel, and then straightened himself up in the road.