en engaged in this system of training, and stooping to remove
bits of stick, fern-stalks, and other such fragments from the child's
path, that the journey might not be brought to an untimely end by
some insuperable barrier a quarter of an inch high, she was alarmed by
discovering that a man on horseback was almost close beside her, the
soft natural carpet having muffled the horse's tread. The rider, who was
Venn, waved his hat in the air and bowed gallantly.

"Diggory, give me my glove," said Thomasin, whose manner it was under
any circumstances to plunge into the midst of a subject which engrossed
her.

Venn immediately dismounted, put his hand in his breastpocket, and
handed the glove.

"Thank you. It was very good of you to take care of it."

"It is very good of you to say so."

"O no. I was quite glad to find you had it. Everybody gets so
indifferent that I was surprised to know you thought of me."

"If you had remembered what I was once you wouldn't have been
surprised."

"Ah, no," she said quickly. "But men of your character are mostly so
independent."

"What is my character?" he asked.

"I don't exactly know," said Thomasin simply, "except it is to cover up
your feelings under a practical manner, and only to show them when you
are alone."

"Ah, how do you know that?" said Venn strategically.

"Because," said she, stopping to put the little girl, who had managed to
get herself upside down, right end up again, "because I do."

"You mustn't judge by folks in general," said Venn. "Still I don't know
much what feelings are nowadays. I have got so mixed up with business
of one sort and t'other that my soft sentiments are gone off in vapour
like. Yes, I am given up body and soul to the making of money. Money is
all my dream."

"O Diggory, how wicked!" said Thomasin reproachfully, and looking at him
in exact balance between taking his words seriously and judging them as
said to tease her.

"Yes, 'tis rather a rum course," said Venn, in the bland tone of one
comfortably resigned to sins he could no longer overcome.

"You, who used to be so nice!"

"Well, that's an argument I rather like, because what a man has once
been he may be again." Thomasin blushed. "Except that it is rather
harder now," Venn continued.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because you be richer than you were at that time."

"O no--not much. I have made it nearly all over to the baby, as it was
my duty to do, except just enough to live on."