passed, that no one was bold enough or sensible enough to ask for it, I
haughtily withdrew my prohibition. About this time I began sending
envelopes, carefully addressed in a feigned hand, to a certain person at
the Oxenbridge Hydro. These envelopes contained no word of writing, but
held, on one day, only a bit of down from a hen's breast, on another, a
goose-quill, on another, a glossy tail-feather, on another, a grain of
corn, and so on. These trifles were regarded by me not as degrading or
unmaidenly hints and suggestions, but simply as tests of intelligence.
Could a man receive tokens of this sort and fail to put two and two
together? I feel that I might possibly support life with a domineering
and autocratic husband,--and there is every prospect that I shall be
called upon to do so,--but not with a stupid one. Suppose one were
linked for ever to a man capable of asking,--"Did _you_ send those
feathers? . . . How was I to guess? . . . How was a fellow to know they
came from you? . . . What on earth could I suppose they meant? . . . What
clue did they offer me as to your whereabouts? . . . Am I a Sherlock
Holmes?"--No, better eternal celibacy than marriage with such a being!

These were the thoughts that had been coursing through my goose-girl mind
while I had been selling dressed poultry, but in some way they had not
prepared me for the appearance of the aforesaid true love.

To see the very person whom one has left civilisation to avoid is always
more or less surprising, and to make the meeting less likely, Buffington
is even farther from Oxenbridge than Barbury Green. The creature was
well mounted (ominous, when he came to override my caprice!) and he
looked bigger, and, yes, handsomer, though that doesn't signify, and
still more determined than when I saw him last; although goodness knows
that timidity and feebleness of purpose were not in striking evidence on
that memorable occasion. I had drawn up under the shade of a tree