d the
advantage of being accidental and certain. It was a tacit assignation
which was almost certain to be kept, and even the shyest of sweethearts
would dare to walk homewards together a little of the way even in the
lightest of summer evenings.

When Sunday morning came, and the one musical bell began to tinkle,
Bertha stood before her open bedroom window, tying her bonnet-ribbons at
the glass, in the embarrassing certainty that both her lovers would be
waiting outside the church to meet her. This certainty was the less
to be endured, because Bertha had the sincerest desire to close with
heavenly rather than with earthly meditations on a Sunday, but she could
no more help being flustered by the thought of Lane Protheroe, and being
chilled by the anticipation of Thistlewood's look of bulldog fidelity,
than she could help breathing. The girl's trouble was that she could not
give her heart to the man who commanded her respect, whilst it was drawn
fluttering with all manner of electric palpitations towards another whom
she thought infinitely less worthy.

There was nothing in the world against Lane Protheroe in any serious
sense. Nobody spoke or thought ill of him, or had ground for ill
speaking or thinking. But it was generally conceded that he _was_ a
butterfly kind of young fellow, and there was a general opinion that
he wanted ballast. Rural human nature is full of candour of a sort, and
Lane was accustomed to criticism. He took it with a bright carelessness,
and in respect to the charge of wanting ballast was apt to answer
that ballast was a necessary thing for boats that carried no cargo.
Thistlewood was generally admitted to be a well-ballasted personage--a
man steady, resolved, serious, entirely trustworthy.

'John Thistlewood's word is as good as his bond,' said one of his
admirers one day in his presence.

'John Thistlewood's word _is_ his bond,' said John Thistlewood, 'as any
man's ought to be.'

People remembered the saying, and quoted it as being characteristic of
the man,--a man cut roughly out of the very granite of fidelity.

Surely, thought Bertha, a girl ought to esteem herself happy in being
singled out by such a man. The cold surface covered so steady, so
lasting a glow. And as for Lane--well, Lane's heats seemed the merest
flashes, intense enough to heat what was near them, but by no means
enduring. There was danger that anything which was of a nature to keep
on burning might catch fire at him,