cries Molly, with all the suspicious haste
and joy that betrays how weak has been her former hope. "Now, _do_
say you are glad I brought you up."

"What need? My only happiness is being with you," says the young man,
softly.

"See how beautiful the land is,--as far as one can discern all green
and gold," says she, unheeding his subdued tenderness. "Honestly, I do
feel a deep interest in farming; and of all the grain that grows I
dearly love the barley. First comes the nice plowed brown earth; then
the ragged bare suspicion of green; then the strengthening and
perfecting of that green until the whole earth is hidden away; then the
soft, juicy look of the young blades nodding and waving at each other
in the wind, that seems almost tender of them, and at last the fleecy,
downy ears all whispering together."

"When you speak in that tone you make me wish myself a barleycorn,"
says Tedcastle, smiling. "Sit down here beside me, will you, and tell
me why your brother calls you 'Molly Bawn'?"

"I hardly know," sinking down near him on the short, cool grass: "it
was a name he gave me when I was a little one. John has ever been my
father, my mother, my all," says the girl, a soft and lovely dew of
earnest affection coming into her eyes. "Were I to love him all my life
with twice the love I now bear him, I would scarcely be grateful
enough."

"Happy John! Molly! What a pretty name it is."

"But not mine really. No. I was christened Eleanor, after my poor
mother, whose history you know. 'Bawn' means fair. 'Fair Molly,'" says
she, with a smile, turning to him her face, that resembles nothing so
much as a newly-opened flower. "I had hair quite golden when a child.
See," tilting her hat so that it falls backward from her head and lies
on the greensward behind. "It is hardly dark yet."

"It is the most beautiful hair in the world," says he, touching with
gentle, reverential fingers the silken coils that glint and shimmer in
the sunlight. "And it is a name that suits you,--and you only."

"Did I never sing you the old Irish song I claim as my own?"

"You never sang for me at all."

"What! you have been here a whole week, and I have never sung for you?"
With widely-opened eyes of pure surprise. "What could I have been
thinking about? Do you know, I sing very nicely." This without the
faintest atom of conceit. "Listen, then, and I will sing to you now."

With her hands clasped around her knees, her head bare, her tresses a
l