a little book in his pocket, out of which he read to her at intervals, lying stretched at her feet, and it was a lasting joke with Cecilia, afterwards, that she would never tell what Mr. Whitefoot’s little book had been.  Rowland had placed himself near Miss Garland, while the feasting went forward on the grass.  She wore a so-called gypsy hat—­a little straw hat, tied down over her ears, so as to cast her eyes into shadow, by a ribbon passing outside of it.  When the company dispersed, after lunch, he proposed to her to take a stroll in the wood.  She hesitated a moment and looked toward Mrs. Hudson, as if for permission to leave her.  But Mrs. Hudson was listening to Mr. Striker, who sat gossiping to her with relaxed magniloquence, his waistcoat unbuttoned and his hat on his nose.

“You can give your cousin your society at any time,” said Rowland.  “But me, perhaps, you ’ll never see again.”

“Why then should we wish to be friends, if nothing is to come of it?” she asked, with homely logic.  But by this time she had consented, and they were treading the fallen pine-needles.

“Oh, one must take all one can get,” said Rowland.  “If we can be friends for half an hour, it ’s so much gained.”

“Do you expect never to come back to Northampton again?”

“‘Never’ is a good deal to say.  But I go to Europe for a long stay.”

“Do you prefer it so much to your own country?”

“I will not say that.  But I have the misfortune to be a rather idle man, and in Europe the burden of idleness is less heavy than here.”

She was silent for a few minutes; then at last, “In that, then, we are better than Europe,” she said.  To a certain point Rowland agreed with her, but he demurred, to make her say more.

“Would n’t it be better,” she asked, “to work to get reconciled to America, than to go to Europe to get reconciled to idleness?”

“Doubtless; but you know work is hard to find.”

“I come from a little place where every one has plenty,” said Miss Garland.  “We all work; every one I know works.  And really,” she added presently, “I look at you with curiosity; you are the first unoccupied man I ever saw.”

“Don’t look at me too hard,” said Rowland, smiling.  “I shall sink into the earth.  What is the name of your little place?”

“West Nazareth,” said Miss Garland, with her usual sobriety.  “It is not so very little, though it ’s smaller than Northampton.”

“I wonder whether I could find any work at West Nazareth,” Rowland said.

“You would not like it,” Miss Garland declared reflectively.  “Though there are far finer woods there than this.  We have miles and miles of woods.”

“I might chop down trees,” said Rowland.  “That is, if you allow it.”

“Allow it?  Why, where should we get our firewood?” Then, noticing that he had spoken jestingly, she glanced at him askance, though with no visible diminution of her gravity.  “Don’t you know how to do anything?  Have you no profession?”