is. She'll swear she's dying for thee, and she is dying for thee, and
she will die for thee; but she'll fling a look over t'other shoulder at
another young feller, though never leaving off dying for thee just the
same."

"She's not dying for me, and so she didn't fling a look at him."

"But she may be dying for him, for she looked at thee."

"I don't know what to make of it at all," said Dick gloomily.

"All I can make of it is," the tranter said, raising his whip, arranging
his different joints and muscles, and motioning to the horse to move on,
"that if you can't read a maid's mind by her motions, nature d'seem to
say thou'st ought to be a bachelor. Clk, clk! Smiler!" And the tranter
moved on.

Dick held Smart's rein firmly, and the whole concern of horse, cart, and
man remained rooted in the lane. How long this condition would have
lasted is unknown, had not Dick's thoughts, after adding up numerous
items of misery, gradually wandered round to the fact that as something
must be done, it could not be done by staying there all night.

Reaching home he went up to his bedroom, shut the door as if he were
going to be seen no more in this life, and taking a sheet of paper and
uncorking the ink-bottle, he began a letter. The dignity of the writer's
mind was so powerfully apparent in every line of this effusion that it
obscured the logical sequence of facts and intentions to an appreciable
degree; and it was not at all clear to a reader whether he there and then
left off loving Miss Fancy Day; whether he had never loved her seriously,