‘Certainly.’

‘We are not helpless young ladies in these parts, nor yet timorous,’ continued Lily.  ’We can walk about without being afraid of ghosts, robbers, wild bulls, young men, or gypsies.  Come the field path, Grace.  I will go as far as the big oak with him, and then I shall turn back, and I shall come in by the stile opposite the church gate, and through the garden.  So you can’t miss me.’

‘I daresay he’ll come back with you,’ said Grace.

’No, he won’t.  He will do nothing of the kind.  He’ll have to go on and open Lady Julia’s bottle of port wine for his own drinking.’

All this was very good on Lily’s part, and very good also on the part of Mrs Dale; and John was of course very much obliged to them.  But there was a lack of romance in it all, which did not seem to him to argue well as to his success.  He did not think much about it, but he felt that Lily would not have been so ready to arrange their walk had she intended to yield to his entreaty.  No doubt in these latter days plain good sense had become the prevailing mark of her character—­perhaps, as Johnny thought, a little too strongly prevailing; but even with all her plain good sense and determination to dispense with the absurdities of romance in the affairs of her life, she would not have proposed herself as his companion for a walk across the fields merely that she might have an opportunity of accepting his hand.  He did not say all this to himself, but he instinctively felt that it was so.  And he felt also that it should have been his duty to arrange the walk, or the proper opportunity for the scene that was to come.  She had done it instead—­she and her mother between them, thereby forcing upon him a painful conviction that he himself had not been equal to the occasion.  ’I always make a mull of it,’ he said to himself, when the girls went up to get their hats.

They went down together through the garden, and parted where the paths led away, one to the great house and the other towards the church.  ’I’ll certainly come and call upon the squire before I go back to London,’ said Johnny.

We’ll tell him so,’ said Mrs Dale.  ’He would be sure to hear that you had been with us, even if we said nothing about it.’

‘Of course he would,’ said Lily; ‘Hopkins has seen him.’  Then they separated, and Lily and John Eames were together.

Hardly a word was said, perhaps not a word, till they had crossed the road and got into the field opposite to the church.  And in this first field there was more than one path, and the children of the village were often there, and it had about it something of a public nature.  John Eames felt that it was by no means a fitting field to say that which he had to say.  In crossing it, therefore, he merely remarked that the day was very fine for walking.  Then he added one special word, ’And it is so good of you, Lily, to come with me.’

’I am very glad to come with you.  I would do more than that, John, to show how glad I am to see you.’  Then they had come to the second little gate, and beyond that the fields were really fields, and there were stiles instead of wicket-gates, and the business of the day must be begun.