girl, very black, very solemn, and very erect, with her hands folded in
front of her very straight up-and-down calico frock, her features
expressive of a wooden stolidity which nothing but a hammer or chisel
could alter, and with large eyes fixed upon a far-away, which,
apparently, had disappeared, leaving the eyes in a condition of idle
out-go.

"Miss Rob," said this wooden Peggy, "Aun' Judy says it's more'n time to
come housekeep."

"Which means," said Miss Roberta, rising, "that I must go and get my key
basket, and descend into the store-room. Won't you come in? We shall
find uncle on the back porch."

Mr Croft declined with thanks, and took his leave, and the lady walked
across the smooth grass to the house, followed by the rigid Peggy.

The young man approached his impatient horse, and, not without some
difficulty, got himself mounted. He had not that facility of
sympathetically combining his own will and that of his horse which comes
to men who from their early boyhood are wont to consider horses as
objects quite as necessary to locomotion as shoes and stockings. But
Lawrence Croft was a fair graduate of a riding school, and he went away
in very good style to his cottage at the Green Sulphur Springs. "I
believe," he said to himself, as he rode through the woods, "that Miss
March expects no more of me than she would expect of any very intimate
friend. I shall feel perfectly free, therefore, to continue my
investigations regarding two points: First, is she worth having? and:
Second, will she have me? And I must be very careful not to get the
position of these points reversed."