So she thought and so she felt, in her dreamy imaginative way, and though she allowed old Hugo to leave her without vexing him by any decided opposition to his plans, she was more than ever firmly resolved to abide by her own interior sense of what was right and fitting.  She heard the wheels of the dog-cart grating the gravel outside the garden gate, and an affectionate impulse moved her to go and see her “Dad” off.  As she made her appearance under the rose-covered porch of the farm-house door, she perceived Landon, who at once pulled off his cap with an elaborate and exaggerated show of respect.

“Good-morning, Miss Jocelyn!”

He emphasized the surname with a touch of malice.  She coloured, but replied “Good-morning” with a sweet composure.  He eyed her askance, but had no opportunity for more words, as old Hugo just then clambered up into the dog-cart, and took the reins of the rather skittish young mare which was harnessed to it.

“Come on, Landon!” he shouted, impatiently—­“No time for farewells!” Then, as Landon jumped up beside him, he smiled, seeing the soft, wistful face of the girl watching him from beneath a canopy of roses.

“Take care of the house while I’m gone!” he called to her;—­ “You’ll find Robin in the orchard.”

He laid the lightest flick of the whip on the mare’s ears, and she trotted rapidly away.

Innocent stood a moment gazing after the retreating vehicle till it disappeared,—­then she went slowly into the house.  Robin was in the orchard, was he?  Well!—­he had plenty of work to do there, and she would not disturb him.  She turned away from the sunshine and flowers and made her way upstairs to her own room.  How quiet and reposeful it looked!  It was a beloved shrine, full of sweet memories and dreams,—­there would never be any room like it in the world for her, she well knew.  Listlessly she sat down at the table, and turned over the pages of an old book she had been reading, but her eyes were not upon it.

“I wonder!” she said, half aloud—­then paused.

The thought in her mind was too daring for utterance.  She was picturing the possibility of going quietly away from Briar Farm all alone, and trying to make a name and career for herself through the one natural gift she fancied she might possess, a gift which nowadays is considered almost as common as it was once admired and rare.  To be a poet and romancist,—­a weaver of wonderful thoughts into musical language,—­this seemed to her the highest of all attainment; the proudest emperor of the most powerful nation on earth was, to her mind, far less than Shakespeare,—­and inferior to the simplest French lyrist of old time that ever wrote a “chanson d’amour.”  But the doubt in her mind was whether she, personally, had any thoughts worth expressing,—­any ideas which the world might be the happier or the better for knowing and sharing?  She drew a long breath,—­the warm colour flushed her cheeks