the bushes never would leave me alone in the woods." She shuddered
slightly here.

"The Bushes! a Devonshire family of that name, I presume?" Guy
interrupted, with intense gravity. "How wrong of them! They are very
ill-regulated young men down in those parts, I believe."

"Don't be absurd; I never saw a creature for months between fifteen and
fifty. Are not those ages safe?" (A shake of the head from Livingstone.)
"I began to be very unhappy; I had no one to tease; my aunts are too
good-natured, and mamma is used to it. At last I had the greatest mind
to do something desperate--to write to you, for instance--merely to see
the household's horror when your answer came. You would have answered,
would you not? I should not have opened it, you know, but given it to
mamma, like a good child."

"Of course; I know you show all your letters to your mother. But that
ruralizing must have been fearful for you, _poverina_! People were
talking a good deal of agricultural distress, but this is the most
piteous case I've heard of. So there were really no men to govern in
that wood?"

"Not even a little boy," said Flora, decisively. "There were two or
three from Oxford in the neighborhood; I used to see them sitting
outside their lodgings in the sun, like rabbits, but they always ran in
before--"

"Before you could get a shot at them, you mean?" broke in Guy; "you
ought to have crept up, and stalked them cleverly."