crossed the highway and entered the
homeward lane, whistling as he went.

Probably, Miss Fancy Day never before or after stood so low in Mr. Dewy's
opinion as on that afternoon. In fact, it is just possible that a few
more blue dresses on the Longpuddle young men's account would have
clarified Dick's brain entirely, and made him once more a free man.

But Venus had planned other developments, at any rate for the present.
Cuckoo-Lane, the way he pursued, passed over a ridge which rose keenly
against the sky about fifty yards in his van. Here, upon the bright
after-glow about the horizon, was now visible an irregular shape, which
at first he conceived to be a bough standing a little beyond the line of
its neighbours. Then it seemed to move, and, as he advanced still
further, there was no doubt that it was a living being sitting in the
bank, head bowed on hand. The grassy margin entirely prevented his
footsteps from being heard, and it was not till he was close that the
figure recognized him. Up it sprang, and he was face to face with Fancy.

"Dick, Dick! O, is it you, Dick!"

"Yes, Fancy," said Dick, in a rather repentant tone, and lowering his
nuts.

She ran up to him, flung her parasol on the grass, put her little head
against his breast, and then there began a narrative, disjointed by such
a hysterical weeping as was never surpassed for intensity in the whole
history of love.

"O Dick," she sobbed out, "where have you been away from me? O, I have
suffered agony, and thought you would never come any more! 'Tis cruel,
Dick; no 'tisn't, it is justice! I've been walking miles and miles up
and down Grey's Wood, trying to find you, till I was wearied and worn
out, and I could walk no further, and had come back this far! O Dick,
directly you were gone, I thought I had offended you and I put down the
dress; 'tisn't finished now, and I never will finish, it, and I'll wear
an old one Sunday! Yes, Dick, I will, because I don't care what I wear
when you are not by my side--ha, you think I do, but I don't!--and I ran
after you, and I saw you go up Snail-Creep and not look back once, and
then you plunged in, and I after you; but I was too far behind. O, I did
wish the horrid bushes had been cut down, so that I could see your dear
shape again! And then I called out to you, and nobody answered, and I
was afraid to call very loud, lest anybody else should hear me. Then I
kept wandering and wandering about, and it w