you marry me? Do, Bathsheba. I love you far more than common!”

“I’ll try to think,” she observed, rather more timorously; “if I can think out of doors; but my mind spreads away so.”

“But you can give a guess.”

“Then give me time.” Bathsheba looked thoughtfully into the distance, away from the direction in which Gabriel stood.

“I can make you happy,” said he to the back of her head, across the bush. “You shall have a piano in a year or two—farmers’ wives are getting to have pianos now—and I’ll practise up the flute right well to play with you in the evenings.”

“Yes; I should like that.”

“And have one of those little ten-pound gigs for market—and nice flowers, and birds—cocks and hens I mean, because they are useful,” continued Gabriel, feeling balanced between poetry and verse.

“I should like it very much.”

“And a frame for cucumbers—like a gentleman and lady.”

“Yes.”

“And when the wedding was over, we’d have it put in the newspaper list of marriages.”

“Dearly I should like that.”

“And the babies in the births—every man jack of ’em! And at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be—and whenever I look up, there will be you.”

“Wait, wait, and don’t be improper!”

Her countenance fell, and she was silent awhile. He contemplated the red berries between them over and over again, to such an extent, that holly seemed in his after-life to be a cypher signifying a proposal of marriage. Bathsheba decisively turned to him.

“No;” ’tis no use,” she said. “I don’t want to marry you.”

“Try.”

“I have tried hard all the time I’ve been thinking; for a marriage would be very nice in one sense. People would talk about me, and think I had won my battle, and I should feel triumphant, and all that, But a husband——”

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