And then it began to run over.

Now this incident was a provocation. Max was artful enough to know that
no girl who ever fills a kettle lets it run over unless she is much
preoccupied. He chose to think she was preoccupied with him. So he
laughed, and she looked quickly round and blushed, and turned her back
upon him with ferocity.

He came boldly up to her.

"I'm so sorry," said he, in a coaxing, confidential, persuasive tone,
such as she had given him no proper encouragement to use, "that we've
had a sort of quarrel just at the last, and spoiled the impression of
you I wanted to carry away."

He was evidently in no hurry to carry anything away, though he went on
with the glove-buttoning with much energy.

She listened, with her eyes down, making, kettle and all, the prettiest
picture possible. There was no light in the outhouse except that which
came from a little four-penny brass hand-lamp, which the girl must have
lit just before her last entrance into the inner room. It was behind
her, on a shelf against the wall; and the light shone through the loose
threads of her fair hair, making an aureole round the side view of her
little head.

She was bewitching like that, so the susceptible Max thought, while he
debated with himself whether he now dared to try again for that small
reward. And he reluctantly decided that he did not dare. And again there