h but plain bread and butter. How absurd of you to complain!"

"Bread and butter! Beefsteak and mushrooms, you mean; roast turkey and
cranberry sauce! A fellow can live on them. But not on eternal honey and
fudge--with my apologies to the lady."

"I should say so, Jimps. You're outrageous, and you don't mean it. I
wouldn't walk another step with you if you did."

"She's undoubtedly the sweetest thing on earth," admitted Stuart. "There
are times when I think I'd like to ask her to marry me on the spot--if
she'd have me, which she wouldn't--me, a farmer! She dazzles me,
bewitches me, makes me all but lose my head. And then I look at my chum,
the girl I've known all my life, and I think--well, sugar is all right,
but you can't get on without salt--and pepper--and ginger--and----"

"Jimps!" In spite of herself Georgiana was laughing infectiously, and
Stuart joined her. "How absolutely ridiculous! I sound like a whole
spice box, and nothing but the 'bitey' spices at that."

"That's what you are," declared James Stuart contentedly. "And when I'm
with you I have no hankering after sugar. Mustard plasters for me;
they're warming."

They walked on, the spirit of good fellowship keeping step with them. If
Georgiana had allowed herself to believe that Stuart was completely
absorbed with the enchantments of the beautiful guest, she now
discovered that, quite as he had said, the enchantment was by no means
complete and he had not lost appreciation of the old friendship and what
it meant to him. This was good to feel. It was all she wanted. If she
had been guilty of a creeping sense of jealousy as she watched Stuart
and Jeannette together, so evidently enjoying each other's society to
the full, it was because it made her suddenly and unpleasantly
understand what it would be to her to live her days in this commonplace
little village without Stuart at her right hand. But here he was,
literally at her right hand, and he was making her walk with him, not a
beggarly square or two out of her way, but a good three miles around a
certain course which once entered upon could not be cut short by any
crossroads. And all the way he was telling her, as he had always done,
all manner of intimate things about his affairs, and asking her of hers.

Before the circuit had been made Georgiana had done that which an hour
before she would have thought far from her intention, natural as such a
procedure would have been a month ago, before Jeannette