‘You give it to me?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Then it is a bargain,’ said he, smiling.  ’Here is my hand upon it.’

She laughed, looked round at him rather wonderingly, but gave her hand, remarking: 

‘But you know I have the right to change my mind three times.’

There is a curious language in the touch of hands, saying often inexplicably what the coarser medium of words would be powerless to say; revealing things not meant to be discovered; and also conveying sweeter, finer, more intimate touches of feeling and mood than tongue could tell if it tried.  Wych Hazel remembered this clasp of her hand, and felt it as often as she remembered it.  There was nothing sentimental; it was only a frank clasp, in which her hand for a moment was not her own; and though the clasp did not linger, for that second’s continuance it gave her an indescribable impression, she could hardly have told of what.  It was not merely the gentleness; she could not separate from that the notion of possession, and of both as being in the mind, to which the hand was an index.  But such a thought passes as it comes.  Something else in those five minutes brought the colour flitting about her face, coming and going as if ashamed of itself; but with it all she was intensely amused; she was not sentimental, nor even serious, and the girlish light heart danced a pas seul to such a medley of tunes that it was a wonder how she could keep step with them all.

‘What do you expect to see at Chickaree?’

’Birds, trees, and horses, and—­Mr. Falkirk, didn’t you say there would be cats?’

‘Let him alone—­he is deep in your book,’ said Rollo, as Mr. Falkirk made some astonished response.  “I meant, what do you remember of the place? we are almost at the gate.’

’I’ll tell you—­nothing yet.  Ah!’—­

Through some lapse in the dense woodland there gleamed upon them as they swept on, the top of an old tower where the sunbeams lay at rest; and from the top, its white staff glittering with light, floated the heavy folds of a deep blue flag, not at rest there, but curling and waving and shaking out their white device, which was however too far off to be distinguished.  She had said she would tell him, but she never spoke; after that one little cry, so full of tears and laughter, he heard nothing but one or two sobs, low and choked down.  Now the lodge, nestling like an acorn under a great oak tree, came in sight first, then the massive piers of the gate.  The gate was wide open, but while the little undergrowth of children started up and took possession of window and door and roadside, the gate was held by the head of the house, a sturdy, middle aged American.  Wych Hazel had leaned out, watching the children; but as the carriage turned through the gateway, and she saw this man, standing there uncovered, caught the working of his brown weatherbeaten face, she bowed her head indeed, in answer to his