“No, thank you; I’d rather walk,” said Elmira, all touched to bliss by his solicitude, but resolved in her pride of poor maidenhood that she would not profit by it.

“Let him go back and get the chaise, and have all the town talking because Lawrence Prescott caught me walking ten miles to get a dress cut?  I guess I won’t!” she told herself.

“You are just the same as ever; you would never let anybody do anything for you unless you paid them for it,” said Lawrence, half angrily.  Then he added, bending low towards her, “But you would pay me, measure pressed down and running over, by going with me—­you know that, Elmira.”

Elmira lost her step again, and her voice trembled a little, though she strove to speak sharply.  “I like to walk,” said she.

“And I tell you you’re all tired out now,” said Lawrence.  “I can see you pant for breath.  Don’t you know, I am going to be a doctor, like father?  Let me go back, and you wait here.”

Elmira shook her pink bonnet decidedly.

“Well, then,” said Lawrence, “I tell you what you must do.”  He slipped off the mare as he spoke.  “Now,” he said, and there was real authority in his voice, “you’ve got to ride.  It’s a man’s saddle, and you won’t sit so very secure, but I’ll lead the mare, and you’ll be safe enough.”

Elmira shrank back.  “Oh, I can’t,” said she.

“Yes, you can.  Whoa, Betty.  She’s gentle enough, for all she’s nervous, and she’s used to a lady’s riding her.  The daughter of the man who sold her to father used to scour the country on her.  Come, put your foot in my hand and jump up!”

“What would people say?”

“There isn’t a house for a good mile, and I’ll let you get down before you reach it if you want to; but I don’t see what harm it would be if the whole town saw us.  Come.”  Lawrence smiled with gentle importunity at her, and held his hand, and Elmira could not help putting her little foot in it and springing to the bay mare’s back in obedience to his bidding.

Elmira, fluttering like a pink flower on the back of the bay mare, who really ambled along gently enough with Lawrence’s hand on her bridle, journeyed for the next mile as one in a happy dream.  She was actually incredulous of the reality of it all.  She was half afraid that the jolt of the bay mare would wake her from slumber; she kept her eyes closed in the recesses of her sun-bonnet.  Here was Lawrence Prescott, about whom she had dreamed ever since she was a child, come home, grown up and grand, grander than any young man in town, grand as a prince, and not forgetting her, knowing her at a glance, even when her face was hidden, and making her ride lest she get over-tired.  She had scarcely seen him, to speak to him, since she was sixteen.  Doctor Prescott had kept his son very close when he was home on his vacations, and not allowed him to mingle much with the village young people.  That summer when Elmira was sixteen there had been company in the doctor’s