ever impossible to understand) thrilled him so that
he waited feverishly, and began to copy out his poem--which of course
he would never dare to show her--till the sound of horses' hoofs roused
him, and, leaning from his window, he saw her riding forth with Val. It
was clear that she wasted no time; but the sight filled him with grief.
He wasted his. If he had not bolted, in his fearful ecstasy, he might
have been asked to go too. From his window he watched them disappear,
appear again in the chine of the road, vanish, and emerge once more for
a minute clear on the outline of the Down. 'Silly brute!' he thought;
'I always miss my chances.'

Why couldn't he be self-confident and ready? And, leaning his chin on
his hands, he imagined the ride he might have had with her. A week-end
was but a week-end, and he had missed three hours of it. Did he know
any one except himself who would have been such a flat? He did not.

He dressed for dinner early, and was first down. He would miss no more.
But he missed Fleur, who came down last. He sat opposite her at dinner,
and it was terrible--impossible to say anything for fear of saying the
wrong thing, impossible to keep his eyes fixed on her in the only
natural way; in sum, impossible to treat normally one with whom in
fancy he had already been over the hills and far away; conscious, too,
all the time, that he must seem to her, to all of them, a dumb gawk.
Yes, it was terrible! And she was talking so well--swooping with swift
wing this way and that. Wonderful how she had learned an art which he
found so disgustingly difficult. She must think him hopeless indeed!

His sister's eyes fixed on him with a certain astonishment, obliged him
at last to look at Fleur; but instantly her eyes, very wide and eager,
seeming to say: "Oh! for goodness' sake!" obliged him to look at Val;
where a grin obliged him to look at his cutlet--that, at least, had no
eyes, and no grin, and he ate it hastily.

"Jon is going to be a farmer," he heard Holly say; "a farmer and a
poet."

He glanced up reproachfully, caught the comic lift of her eyebrow just
like their father's, laughed, and felt better.

Val recounted the incident of Monsieur Prosper Profond; nothing could
have been more favourable, for, in relating it, he regarded Holly, who
in turn regarded him, while Fleur seemed to be regarding with a slight
frown some thought of her own, and Jon was really free to look at her
at last. She had on a white