obliged to you,"
she said; "but I never asked any one to give it me, unless it is the
beck itself; and the beck never seems to grudge it."

"You are not like anybody I ever saw. You speak very different from the
people about here; and you look very different ten times over."

Insie reddened at his steadfast gaze, and turned her sweet soft face
away. And yet she wanted to know more. "Different means a great many
things. Do you mean that I look better, or worse?"

"Better, of course; fifty thousand times better! Why, you look like a
beautiful lady. I tell you, I have seen hundreds of ladies; perhaps you
haven't, but I have. And you look better than all of them."

"You say a great deal that you do not think," Insie answered, quietly,
yet turning round to show her face again. "I have heard that gentlemen
always do; and I suppose that you are a young gentleman."

"I should hope so indeed. Don't you know who I am? I am Lancelot Yordas
Carnaby."

"Why, you look quite as if you could stop the river," she answered, with
a laugh, though she felt his grandeur. "I suppose you consider me nobody
at all. But I must get my water."

"You shall not carry water. You are much too pretty. I will carry it for
you."

Pet was not "introspective;" otherwise he must have been astonished at
himself. His mother and aunt would have doubted their own eyes if
they had beheld this most dainty of the dainty, and mischievous of the
mischievous (with pain and passion for the moment vanquished), carefully
carrying an old brown pitcher. Yet this he did, and wonderfully well,
as he believed; though Insie only laughed to see him. For he had on
the loveliest gaiters in the world, of thin white buckskin with agate
buttons, and breeches of silk, and a long brocaded waistcoat, and a
short coat of rich purple velvet, also a riding hat with a gray ostrich
plume. And though he had very little calf inside his gaiters, and not
much chest to fill out his waistcoat, and narrower shoulders than a
velvet coat deserved, it would have been manifest, even to a tailor,
that the boy had lineal, if not lateral, right to his rich habiliments.

Insie of the Gill (who seemed not to be of peasant birth, though so
plainly dressed), came gently down the steep brook-side to see what was
going to be done for her.

She admired Lancelot, both for bravery of apparel and of action; and
she longed to know how he would get a good pitcher of water without any
splash upon his clo