Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/197

Rh glibbest tongue in Christendom—with never a word to say for myself. Although I know him, he does not know me. There is no recognition in his glance, only an alert sort of surprise; but, thank heaven, no amusement, which is under the circumstances simply angelic in him. My heart is crying over and over again, "He has come back! He has come back!” with a glad, breathless hurry that amazes me; but my lips are dumb, my hand does not steal out in friendly greeting, and if ever a young woman looked an awkward, gaping, silly bit of rusticity, that young woman is me. For the first time in all my life, perhaps, I do not take the first word, and he speaks.

"I am trying to find my way to the Manor House, but I am not sure if I am in the right path. Can you direct me?"

His voice breaks the spell, my tongue begins to wag again.

"I am going that way, and will show you."

I turn my back upon him, for the path is narrow, wondering heartily whether he is relieving his feelings by having a good grin at my back! Such a figure as I look! though on the whole I fancy my back view is not quite as disreputable as my front. Shall I turn and ascertain? No, for it is always more bearable to suspect people are making fun of you than to know it. Arrived at the stile I find myself in a dilemma: to scramble over it anyhow by myself is one thing, to be delicately assisted over it by a gentleman another; for it consists of a single upright slab of stone that affords no foothold whatever, and the only legitimate means of surmounting it is to take it in your stride or vault it. In the present instance I can do neither, so I look in sore perplexity from Mr. Vasher to the stile, and from the stile to him, until, he probably seeing the difficulty, we catch each other's eye and go off into sudden laughter.

"I never saw anything in the least like that before," he says. "Was it erected for acrobats?"