“Well, we’ve come to see you, Rufus,” said Miss Cadwallader.

“I thought you had come to see my brother,” said he.

“I didn’t come to see either one or the other,” said Elizabeth.  “I came to see what you are doing.”

“I hope you are gratified,” said the young man a little tartly.

“What’s the use of taking so much trouble to break up the ground?” said Rose.

“Because, unfortunately, there is no way of doing it without trouble,” said Rufus, looking unspoken bright things into the furrow at his feet.

“But why couldn’t you just make holes in the ground and put the seed in?”

“For a reason that you will appreciate, Miss Rose, if you will put on your bonnet the wrong way, with the front precisely where the back should be.”

“I don’t understand,” —­ said the young lady, with something of an inclination to pout, Will’s face was so full of understanding.

“It isn’t necessary that you should understand such a business,” he said, becoming grave.  “It is our fortune to do it, and it is yours to have nothing to do with it, —­ which is much better.”

“I have the happiness to disagree with you, Mr. Rufus,” said Elizabeth.

“In what?”

“In thinking that we have nothing to do with it, or that it is not necessary we should understand it.”

“I don’t see the happiness, Miss Elizabeth; for your disagreement imposes upon you a necessity which I should think better avoided.”

“Which ploughs the best, Rufus?” said Rose; —­ “you or Winthrop?”

“There is one kind of ploughing,” said Rufus biting his lip, “which Winthrop doesn’t understand at all.”

“And you understand them all, I suppose?”

He didn’t answer.

“What is the kind he does not understand, Mr. Rufus?” said Elizabeth.

“Ploughing with another man’s heifer.”

“Why, what’s that, Rufus?  I don’t know what you mean,” said Miss Cadwallader.

No more did Elizabeth, and she had no mind to engage the speaker on unequal terms.  She called her cousin off and took the road home, leaving Winifred to speak to her brother and follow at her leisure.

“How different those two people are,” she remarked.

“Which one do you like best?”

“Winthrop, a great deal.”

“I know you like him the best,” said her cousin wilfully.

“Of course you do, for I tell you.”

“I don’t.  I like the other a great deal the best.”

“He wasn’t very glad to see us,” said Elizabeth.

“Why wasn’t he?  Yes he was.  He was as glad as the other one.”

“The other one didn’t care twopence about it.”

“And what did this one care?”

“He cared, —­” said Elizabeth.

“Well, I like he should —­ the other one don’t care about anything.”

“Yes he does,” said Elizabeth.

“I shall give Mr. Haye a hint —­that he had better not send you here another summer,” said Rose wittily; —­ “there is no telling what anybody will care for.  I wouldn’t have thought it of you.”