often heard her
hint something like that, and yet he had never dared to reason with
her or show her what he thought of her. Should he do so now?

"Wenna," he said, blushing hotly, "I can't make you out sometimes. You
speak as if no one cared for you. Now, if I were to tell you--"

"Oh, I am not so ungrateful," she said hastily. "I know that two or
three do; and--and, Mr. Trelyon, do you think you could coax that
little dog over the stream again? You see he has come back again--he
can't find his way home."

Mr. Trelyon called to the dog: it came down to the river's side, and
whined and shivered on the brink.

"Do you care a brass farthing about the little beast?" he said to
Wenna.

"I must put him on his way home," she answered.

Thereupon the young man went straight through the stream to the other
side, jumping the deeper portions of the channel: he caught up the dog
and brought it back to her; and when she was very angry with him for
this mad performance, he merely kicked some of the water out of his
trousers and laughed.

Then a smile broke over her face also. "Is that an example of what
people would do for me?" she said shyly. "Mr. Trelyon, you must keep
walking through the warm grass till your feet are dry; or will you
come along to the inn, and I shall get you some shoes and stockings?
Pray do, and at once. I am rather in a hurry."

"I'll go along with you, anyway," he said, "and put this little brute
into the highway. But why are you in a hurry?"

"Because," said Wenna, as they set out to walk down the
valley--"because my mother and I are going to Penzance the day after
to-morrow, and I have a lot of things to get ready."

"To Penzance?" said he with a sudden falling of the face.

"Yes. She has been dreadfully out of sorts lately, and she has sunk
into a kind of despondent state. The doctor says she must have a
change--a holiday, really--to take her away from the cares of the
house--"

"Why, Wenna, it's you who want the holiday--it's you who have the
cares of the house," Trelyon said warmly.

"And so I have persuaded her to go to Penzance for a week or two, and
I go with her to look after her. Mr. Trelyon, would you be kind enough
to keep Rock for me until we come back? I am afraid of the servants
neglecting him."

"You needn't be afraid of that: he's not one of the ill-favored--every
one will attend to him," said Trelyon; and then he added, after a
minute or two of silence, "The fact is, I thin