le and priced me high. Heigho! but
it's a difficult world for women. Either a man thinks you an angel, and
then you know him for a fool, or he sees through you and won't marry you
for worlds. If _we_ behaved like that, men would fare badly, I reckon.
Zeb loved me till the very moment I began to respect him: then he left
off. If this one . . . I like his cool way of plucking my roses,
though. Zeb would have waited and wanted, till the flower dropped."

She spent longer than usual over her dressing: so that when she appeared
in the parlour the two men were already seated at breakfast. The room
still bore traces of last night's frolic. The uncarpeted boards gleamed
as the guests' feet had polished them; and upon the very spot where the
stranger had danced now stood the breakfast-table, piled with broken
meats. This alone of all the heavier pieces of furniture had been
restored to its place. As Ruby entered, the stranger broke off an
earnest conversation he was holding with the farmer, and stood up to
greet her. The rose lay on her plate.

"Who has robbed my rose-bush?" she asked.

"I am guilty," he answered: "I stole it to give it back; and, not being
mine, 'twas the harder to part with."

"To my mind," broke in Farmer Tresidder, with his mouth full of ham,
"the best part o' the feast be the over-plush. Squab pie, muggetty pie,
conger pie, sweet giblet pie--such a whack of pies do try a man, to be
sure. Likewise junkets an' heavy cake be a responsibility, for if not
eaten quick, they perish. But let it be mine to pass my days with a
cheek o' pork like the present instance. Ruby, my dear, the young man
here wants to lave us."

"Leave us?" echoed Ruby, pricking her finger deep in the act of pinning
the stranger's rose in her bosom.

"You hear, young man. That's the tone o' speech signifyin' 'damn it
all!' among women. And so say I, wi' all these vittles cryin' out to be
ate."

"These brisk days," began the stranger quietly, "are not to be let slip.
I have no wife, no kin, no friends, no fortune--or only the pound or two
sewn in my belt. The rest has been lost to me these three days and lies
with the _Sentinel_, five fathoms deep in your cove below. It is time
for me to begin the world anew."

"But how about that notion o' mine?"

"We beat about the bush, I think," answered the other, pushing back his
chair a bit and turning towards Ruby. "My dear young lady, your father
has been begging me to st