DICK DRIVES FANCY HOME AGAIN. An easy bend of neck and graceful set of head, full and wavy bundles of dark brown hair, light fall of little feet, pretty devices on the skirt of the dress, clear, deep eyes-in short, a bunch of sweets. It was Fancy. Dick's heart went round to her with a rush. : The scene was the corner of the front street at Budmouth, at which point the angle of the last house in the row cuts perpendicularly a wide expanse of nearly motionless ocean to-day shaded in bright tones of green and opal. Dick and Smart had just emerged from the street, and there, against the brilliant sheet of liquid color, stood Fancy Day, and she turned and recognized him. Dick suspended his thoughts of the letter and wonder at how she came there by driving close to the edge of the parade displacing two chairmen, who had just come to life for the summer in new clean shirts and revivified clothes, and being almost displaced in turn by a rigid boy advancing with a roll under his arm, and looking neither to the right nor the left — and asking if she were going to Mellstock that night. "Yes; I'm waiting for the carrier," she replied, seeming, too, to suspend thoughts of the letter. "Now, I can drive you home nicely, and you save an hour. Will you come with me ?" As Fancy's power to will anything seemed to have departed in some mysterious manner at that moment, Dick settled the matter by getting out and assisting her into the vehicle without another word. The temporary flush upon her cheek changed to a lesser hue, which was permanent, and at length their eyes met; there was present between them a certain feeling of embarrassment, which arises at such moments when all the instinctive acts dictated by the position have been performed. Dick, being engaged with the reins, thought less of this awkwardness than did Fancy, who had nothing to do but to feel his presence, and to be more and more conscious of the fact that by accepting a seat beside him in this way she succumbed to the tone of his note. Smart jogged along, and Dick jogged, and the helpless Fancy necessarily jogged too, and she felt that she was, in a measure, captured and made a prisoner. "I am so much obliged to you for your company, Miss Day." To Miss Day, crediting him with the same consciousness of mastery a consciousness of which he was perfectly innocent -this remark sounded like a magnanimous intention to soothe her, the captive. "I didn't come for the pleasure of obliging you with my company, ," she said. The answer had an unexpected manner of incivility in it that must have been rather surprising to young Dewy. At the same time it may be observed that when a young woman returns a rude answer to a young man's civil remark, her heart is in a state which argues rather hopefully for his case than other wise. There was silence between them till they had passed about twenty of the equidistant elm trees that ornamented the road leading up out of the town. "Though I didn't come for that purpose, either, I would have," said Dick, at the twenty-first tree. "Now, Mr. Dewy, no flirtation, because it's wrong, and I don't wish it." Dick seated himself afresh just as he had been sitting before, and arranged his looks very emphatically, then cleared his throat. "Really, anybody would think you had met me on business and were just going to begin," said the lady, intractably. "Yes, they would." "Why, you never have, to be sure!" This was a shaky beginning. He chopped round, and said cheerily, as a man who had resolved never to spoil his jollity by loving one of womankind: "Well, how are you getting on, Miss Day, at the present time? Gayly, I don't doubt for a moment." "I am not gay, Dick; you know that." "Gayly doesn't mean decked in gay dresses." "I didn't suppose gayly was gayly dressed. Mighty me, what a scholar you've grown!" "Lots of things have happened to you this spring, I see." "What have you seen?" "Oh, nothing; I've heard, I mean!" "What have you heard?" 66 "The name of a pretty man, with brass studs and a copper ring and a tin watch chain, a little mixed up with your own. That's all." "That's a very unkind picture of Mr. Shinar, for that's who you mean. The studs are gold, as you know, and it's a real silver chain; the ring I can't conscientiously defend, and he only wore it once.' "He might have worn it a hundred times without showing it half so much." "Well, he's nothing to me," she serenely observed. "Not any more than I am?" "Now, Mr. Dewy," said Fancy, severely, "certainly he isn't any more to me than you are!" "Not so much?" She looked aside to consider the precise compass of that question. "That I can't exactly answer," she replied, with soft archness. As they were going rather slowly, another spring cart, containing a farmer, farmer's wife, and farmer's man, jogged past them, and the farmer's wife and farmer's man eyed the couple very curiously. The farmer never looked up from the horse's tail. 66 Why can't you exactly answer?" said Dick, quickening Smart a little, and jogging on just behind the farmer and farmer's wife and man. As no answer came, and as their eyes had nothing else to do, they both contemplated the picture presented in front, and noticed how the farmer's wife sat flattened between the two men, who bulged over each end of the seat to give her room, till they almost sat upon their respective wheels; and they looked, too, at the farmer's wife's silk mantle, inflating itself between her shoulders like a balloon, and sinking flat again at each jog of the horse. The farmer's wife, feeling their eyes sticking into her back, looked over her shoulder. Dick dropped ten yards further behind. "Fancy, why can't you answer?" he repeated. "Because how much you are to me depends upon how much I am to you," said she in low tones. "Everything," said Dick, putting his hand toward hers, and casting emphatic eyes upon the upper curve of her cheek. "Now, Richard Dewy, no touching me. I didn't say in what way your thinking of me affected the question - perhaps |
