"No--not onless ye remember suthin' about these pills." He exhibited a
box containing about half a dozen. "I forget the direction--I don't
seem to remember much, any way, these times. They're 'Jones's Vegetable
Compound.' If ye've ever took 'em, ye'll remember whether the reg'lar
dose is eight. They ain't but six here. But perhaps ye never tuk any,"
he added deprecatingly.

"No," said Miss Milly curtly. She had usually a keen sense of the
ludicrous; but somehow Mr. Hawkins's eccentricity only pained her.

"Will you let me see you to the foot of the hill?" he said again, after
another embarrassing pause.

Miss Arnot felt instantly that such an act would condone her trespass in
the eyes of the world. She might meet some of her invisible admirers,
or even her companions; and, with all her erratic impulses, she was,
nevertheless, a woman, and did not entirely despise the verdict of
conventionality. She smiled sweetly, and assented; and in another moment
the two were lost in the shadows of the wood.

Like many other apparently trivial acts in an uneventful life, it was
decisive. As she expected, she met two or three of her late applauders,
whom, she fancied, looked sheepish and embarrassed; she met, also, her
companions looking for her in some alarm, who really appeared astonished
at her escort, and, she fancied, a trifle envious of her evident
success. I fear that Miss Arnot, in response to their anxious inquiries,
did not state entirely the truth, but, without actual assertion, led
them to believe that she had, at a very early stage of the proceeding,
completely subjugated this weak-minded giant, and had brought him