The boy took her hand, and she resumed her thoughts; and, pressing his fingers and feeling warm to him both for his presence and silence, so does the blood in youth lead the mind, even cool and innocent blood, even with a touch, that she said to herself, “And if I marry, and then . . .  Where will honour be then?  I marry him to be true to my word of honour, and if then . . . !” An intolerable languor caused her to sigh profoundly.  It is written as she thought it; she thought in blanks, as girls do, and some women.  A shadow of the male Egoist is in the chamber of their brains overawing them.

“Were I to marry, and to run!” There is the thought; she is offered up to your mercy.  We are dealing with a girl feeling herself desperately situated, and not a fool.

“I’m sure you’re dead tired, though,” said Crossjay.

“No, I am not; what makes you think so?” said Clara.

“I do think so.”

“But why do you think so?”

“You’re so hot.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You’re so red.”

“So are you, Crossjay.”

“I’m only red in the middle of the cheeks, except when I’ve been running.  And then you talk to yourself, just as boys do when they are blown.”

“Do they?”

“They say:  ‘I know I could have kept up longer’, or, ‘my buckle broke’, all to themselves, when they break down running.”

“And you have noticed that?”

“And, Miss Middleton, I don’t wish you were a boy, but I should like to live near you all my life and be a gentleman.  I’m coming with Miss Dale this evening to stay at the Hall and be looked after, instead of stopping with her cousin who takes care of her father.  Perhaps you and I’ll play chess at night.”

“At night you will go to bed, Crossjay.”

“Not if I have Sir Willoughby to catch hold of.  He says I’m an authority on birds’ eggs.  I can manage rabbits and poultry.  Isn’t a farmer a happy man?  But he doesn’t marry ladies.  A cavalry officer has the best chance.”

“But you are going to be a naval officer.”

“I don’t know.  It’s not positive.  I shall bring my two dormice, and make them perform gymnastics on the dinnertable.  They’re such dear little things.  Naval officers are not like Sir Willoughby.”

“No, they are not,” said Clara, “they give their lives to their country.”

“And then they’re dead,” said Crossjay.

Clara wished Sir Willoughby were confronting her:  she could have spoken.

She asked the boy where Mr. Whitford was.  Crossjay pointed very secretly in the direction of the double-blossom wild-cherry.  Coming within gaze of the stem, she beheld Vernon stretched at length, reading, she supposed; asleep, she discovered:  his finger in the leaves of a book; and what book?  She had a curiosity to know the title of the book he would read beneath these boughs, and grasping Crossjay’s hand fast she craned her neck, as one timorous of