“How many times have I told you?” she cried, and seized him and snatched his stick away from him.

“But they’d escaped!” he cried, struggling to get free.

“You’re a very naughty boy.  If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times.  I won’t have you chasing the geese!” she said, and crumpling Mr. Floyd’s letter in her hand, she held Johnny fast and herded the geese back into the orchard.

“How could I think of marriage!” she said to herself bitterly, as she fastened the gate with a piece of wire.  She had always disliked red hair in men, she thought, thinking of Mr. Floyd’s appearance, that night when the boys had gone to bed.  And pushing her work-box away, she drew the blotting-paper towards her, and read Mr. Floyd’s letter again, and her breast went up and down when she came to the word “love,” but not so fast this time, for she saw Johnny chasing the geese, and knew that it was impossible for her to marry any one—­let alone Mr. Floyd, who was so much younger than she was, but what a nice man—­and such a scholar too.

“Dear Mr. Floyd,” she wrote.—­“Did I forget about the cheese?” she wondered, laying down her pen.  No, she had told Rebecca that the cheese was in the hall.  “I am much surprised...” she wrote.

But the letter which Mr. Floyd found on the table when he got up early next morning did not begin “I am much surprised,” and it was such a motherly, respectful, inconsequent, regretful letter that he kept it for many years; long after his marriage with Miss Wimbush, of Andover; long after he had left the village.  For he asked for a parish in Sheffield, which was given him; and, sending for Archer, Jacob, and John to say good-bye, he told them to choose whatever they liked in his study to remember him by.  Archer chose a paper-knife, because he did not like to choose anything too good; Jacob chose the works of Byron in one volume; John, who was still too young to make a proper choice, chose Mr. Floyd’s kitten, which his brothers thought an absurd choice, but Mr. Floyd upheld him when he said:  “It has fur like you.”  Then Mr. Floyd spoke about the King’s Navy (to which Archer was going); and about Rugby (to which Jacob was going); and next day he received a silver salver and went—­first to Sheffield, where he met Miss Wimbush, who was on a visit to her uncle, then to Hackney—­then to Maresfield House, of which he became the principal, and finally, becoming editor of a well-known series of Ecclesiastical Biographies, he retired to Hampstead with his wife and daughter, and is often to be seen feeding the ducks on Leg of Mutton Pond.  As for Mrs. Flanders’s letter—­when he looked for it the other day he could not find it, and did not like to ask his wife whether she had put it away.  Meeting Jacob in Piccadilly lately, he recognized him after three seconds.  But Jacob had grown such a fine young man that Mr. Floyd did not like to stop him in the street.

“Dear me,” said Mrs. Flanders, when she read in the Scarborough and Harrogate Courier that the Rev. Andrew Floyd, etc., etc., had been made Principal of Maresfield House, “that must be our Mr. Floyd.”