Bellowing against the thunder, Evan bade her throw back her garment, and stand and give him up her arms, that he might lift her on the horse behind him.

There came a muffled answer, on a big sob, as it seemed.  And as if heaven paused to hear, the storm was mute.

Could he have heard correctly?  The words he fancied he had heard sobbed were: 

‘Best bonnet.’

The elements hereupon crashed deep and long from end to end, like a table of Titans passing a jest.

Rain-drops, hard as hail, were spattering a pool on her head.  Evan stooped his shoulder, seized the soaked garment, and pulled it back, revealing the features of Polly Wheedle, and the splendid bonnet in ruins—­all limp and stained.

Polly blinked at him penitentially.

‘Oh, Mr. Harrington; oh, ain’t I punished!’ she whimpered.

In truth, the maid resembled a well-watered poppy.

Evan told her to stand up close to the horse, and Polly stood up close, looking like a creature that expected a whipping.  She was suffering, poor thing, from that abject sense of the lack of a circumference, which takes the pride out of women more than anything.  Note, that in all material fashions, as in all moral observances, women demand a circumference, and enlarge it more and more as civilization advances.  Respect the mighty instinct, however mysterious it seem.

‘Oh, Mr. Harrington, don’t laugh at me,’ said Polly.

Evan assured her that he was seriously examining her bonnet.

’It ‘s the bonnet of a draggletail,’ said Polly, giving up her arms, and biting her under-lip for the lift.

With some display of strength, Evan got the lean creature up behind him, and Polly settled there, and squeezed him tightly with her arms, excusing the liberty she took.

They mounted the beacon, and rode along the ridge whence the West became visible, and a washed edge of red over Beckley Church spire and the woods of Beckley Court.

‘And what have you been doing to be punished?  What brought you here?’ said Evan.

‘Somebody drove me to Fallow field to see my poor sister Susan,’ returned Polly, half crying.

’Well, did he bring you here and leave you?

’No:  he wasn’t true to his appointment the moment I wanted to go back; and I, to pay him out, I determined I’d walk it where he shouldn’t overtake me, and on came the storm . . .  And my gown spoilt, and such a bonnet!’

‘Who was the somebody?’

‘He’s a Mr. Nicholas Frim, sir.’

‘Mr. Nicholas Frim will be very unhappy, I should think.’

‘Yes, that’s one comfort,’ said Polly ruefully, drying her eyes.

Closely surrounding a young man as a young woman must be when both are on the same horse, they, as a rule, talk confidentially together in a very short time.  His ‘Are you cold?’ when Polly shivered, and her ’Oh, no; not very,’ and a slight screwing of her body up to him, as she spoke, to assure him and herself of it, soon made them intimate.