whispered in my ear:     

       “George, come home with me. I have got something to show you that is better worth seeing than the ducks.”      

       “What is it?”      

       “It’s a surprise. I won’t tell you.”      

       “Will you give me a kiss?”      

       The charming little creature put her slim sun-burned arms round my neck, and answered:     

       “As many kisses as you like, George.”      

       It was innocently said, on her side. It was innocently done, on mine. The good easy bailiff, looking aside at the moment from his ducks, discovered us pursuing our boy-and-girl courtship in each other’s arms. He shook his big forefinger at us, with something of a sad and doubting smile.     

       “Ah, Master George, Master George!” he said. “When your father comes home,       do you think he will approve of his son and heir kissing his bailiff’s daughter?”      

       “When my father comes home,” I answered, with great dignity, “I shall tell him the truth. I shall say I am going to marry your daughter.”      

       The bailiff burst out laughing, and looked back again at his ducks.     

       “Well, well!” we heard him say to himself. “They’re only children. There’s no call, poor things, to part them yet awhile.”      

       Mary and I had a great dislike to be called children. Properly understood, one of us was a lady aged ten, and the other was a gentleman aged thirteen. We left the good bailiff indignantly, and went away together, hand in hand, to the cottage.     

  

       CHAPTER II. TWO YOUNG HEARTS.     

       “HE is growing too fast,” said the doctor to my mother; “and he is getting a great deal too clever for a boy at his age. Remove him from school, ma’am, for six months; let him run about in the open air at home; and if you find him with a book 

 Prev. P 13/227 next