time to be surprised, noticed that her manner in
shaking hands with these two stout and spectacled old vulgarians
differed in no way from her manner in shaking hands with him. This in
itself was a renewal of that calm, inexplicable disdain with which the
girl had treated him from the first. If rustic beauty had been fluttered
at his magnificent pressure, he could have gone his way and thought no
more about it; but when rustic beauty was just as cool and unmoved by
his appearance as if their social positions had been reversed, the
thing became naturally moving, and had in it a lasting astonishment for
leisure moments.

And there was no denying that the girl was surprisingly pretty. Prettier
than ever this Sunday morning, in a remarkably neat dress of dove color,
a demurely coquettish hat, and a bit of cherry-colored ribbon. Rustic
beauty was not altogether disdainful of town-grown aids, it would seem,
for Ferdinand's eye, trained to be critical in such matters, noted that
the girl was finely gloved and booted.

Her dress was like a part of her, but that, though the young gentleman
could not be supposed to know it, was a charm she owed to her own good
taste and her own supple fingers. The young gentleman might have been
supposed to know, perhaps, that her greatest charm of all was her
unconsciousness of charming, and it was certainly this which touched him
more than anything else about her.

There was no outer sign of the young Ferdinand's inward disturbance.

"I am afraid," he said, resolute to draw her into talk with himself if
he could, though it were only for a moment, "I am afraid that I have
made Mr. Eld very angry."

Ruth's brown eyes took a half-smiling charge of Sennacherib's surly
figure.

"Seems," said Sennacherib, "the young gentleman was a-dinin' last night
along with the vicar, and it appears as some o' the fools he knows want
to rob the parish church o' the band, and build a horgin."

"The vicar won't listen to the idea," said Ferdinand. "There was only
one opinion about it."

"It would be a great shame to break up the band," Ruth answered,
speaking with vivacity, and addressing Ferdinand. "Everybody would
miss it so. We would rather have the band than the finest organ in the
world."

It happened, as such things will happen for the disturbance of lovers,
that just as Ruth turned to address Ferdinand, Reuben Gold marched under
the lich-gate and caught sight of the group. The girl, her father, the