dkerchief: Miss Day: I called with." He held it out
spasmodically and awkwardly. "Mother found it: under a chair."

"O, thank you very much for bringing it, Mr. Dewy. I couldn't think
where I had dropped it."

Now Dick, not being an experienced lover--indeed, never before having
been engaged in the practice of love-making at all, except in a small
schoolboy way--could not take advantage of the situation; and out came
the blunder, which afterwards cost him so many bitter moments and a
sleepless night:-

"Good morning, Miss Day."

"Good morning, Mr. Dewy."

The gate was closed; she was gone; and Dick was standing outside,
unchanged in his condition from what he had been before he called. Of
course the Angel was not to blame--a young woman living alone in a house
could not ask him indoors unless she had known him better--he should have
kept her outside before floundering into that fatal farewell. He wished
that before he called he had realized more fully than he did the pleasure
of being about to call; and turned away.

PART THE SECOND--SPRING

CHAPTER I: PASSING BY THE SCHOOL

It followed that, as the spring advanced, Dick walked abroad much more
frequently than had hitherto been usual with him, and was continually
finding that his nearest way to or from home lay by the road which
skirted the garden of the school. The first-fruits of his perseverance
were that, on turning the angle on the nineteenth journey by that track,
he saw Miss Fancy's figure, clothed in a dark-gray dress, looking from a
high open window upon the crown of his hat. The friendly greeting
resulting from this rencounter was considered so valuable an elixir that
Dick passed still oftener; and by the time he had almost trodden a little
path under the fence where never a path was before, he was rewarded with
an actual meeting face to face on the open road before her gate. This
brought another meeting, and another, Fancy faintly showing by her
bearing that it was a pleasure to her of some kind to see him there; but
the sort of pleasure she derived, whether exultation at the hope her
exceeding fairness inspired, or the true feeling which was alone Dick's
concern, he could not anyhow decide, although he meditated on her every
little movement for hours after it was made.

CHAPTER II: A MEETING OF THE QUIRE

It was the evening of a fine spring day. The descending sun appeared as
a nebulous blaze of amber light, its outline b