Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/114

104 John Bassett to the three women whom he was to take charge of for the afternoon, Fanny Lane looked full in John Bassett's face and said,—

"I have seen you before, Mr. Bassett—I saw you at the camp-meeting. You went out in the middle of the last prayer, and I thought it was so very wrong of you."

John was dumbfounded. All the old bewilderment of senses and emotions which he had felt at his first sight of this girl, rushed back upon him now,—also something of the old terror. How could he be sure that she had not seen him during the whole time he had spent in watching her? How could he be sure that she had not read his thoughts and feelings in his face? How could he be sure that she was not at this very moment reading clearly all his discomforts and perplexity? Heartily, John wished himself and his horses safely back on the Bassett farm.

But all that Miss Lane saw of this mental perturbation was a slight hesitancy and slowness of speech, which she set down to the natural shyness of a rural man—unaccustomed to be at ease with city women; and she found something very quaint and amusing in John's concise reply:—

"I do not think any one heard me go out. No one looked up that I saw."

As Miss Lane's eyes were probably the only eyes in that whole congregation which were not