, and carrying you off, never to be
seen more."

"You are very alarming," said Elinor. "I don't know what you mean. You
can be off with your bargain if you please, Phil; but you had better
make up your mind at once, so that mamma may countermand her invitations,
and stop Gunter from sending the cake."

(It was Gunter who was the man in those days. I believe people go to
Buszard now.)

He gave her again a vehement hug, and burst into a laugh. "I might jilt
you, Nell; such a thing is on the cards. I might leave you in the lurch
at the church door; but when you talk of countermanding the cake, I
can't face that situation. Society would naturally be up in arms about
that. So you must take your chance like the other innocents. I'll eat
you up as gently as I can, and hide my tusks as long as it's possible.
Come on, Nell, don't let us sit here and get the mopes, and think of our
consciences. Come and see if that show is in the village. Life's better
than thinking, old girl."

"Do you call the show in the village, life?" she said, half pleased to
rouse him, half sorry to be thus carried away.

"Every show is life," said Phil, "and everywhere that people meet is
better than anywhere where you're alone. Mind you take in that axiom,
Nell. It's our rule of life, you know, among the set you're marrying
into. That's how the Jew gets on. That's how we all get on. By this time
next year you'll be well inured into it like all the rest. That's what
your Rector never taught you, I'll be bound; but you'll see the old
fellow practises it whenever he has a chance. Why, there they begin,
tootle-te-too. Come on, Nell, and don't let us lose the fun."

He drew her along hastily, hurrying while the flute and the drum began
to perform their parts. Sound spreads far in that tranquil country,
where no railway was visible, and where the winds for the moment were
still. It was Pan's pipes that were being played, attracting a few
stragglers from the scattered houses. Within a hundred yards from the
church, at the corner of four roads, stood the Bull's Head, with a
cottage or two linked on to its long straggling front. And this was all
that did duty for a village at Windyhill. The Rectory stood back in its
own copse, surrounded by a growth of young birches and oak near the
church. The Hills dwelt intermediate between the Bull's Head and the
ecclesiastical establishment. The school and schoolmaster's house were
behind the Bull. The show was surrou