Page:A Colonial Wooing.djvu/104

 criticising neighbors, who sometimes overstepped the mark and encroached upon private concerns. He was getting pretty tired of the whole matter.

"No," he replied, a little curtly, "not Ruth, but my shop. I cannot keep my customers waiting, and must often be absent on Fifth days."

"No occupation would require thy absence from appointed meetings unless thee gave heed to worldly inclination." And with this parting admonition, John was left to his own reflections.

As he walked to his shop, a gorgeous red-bird crossed his path and whistled merrily when perched in a cedar hard by. "What a gay worldling, and whistling too!" exclaimed John. "How I wish Ruth could see and hear this bird!" And he looked in the direction of her home, wondering what she might then be doing. Friend Bunting had made no very deep impression.

While John had been thus engaged, William Blake was on the other side of the creek, and had been engaged in two very