extraordinary effect he had produced on her.

"I must go,--I'm ever so much obliged to you," she said.

"Drop in again," he said, as he took her trembling hand .... When she had
walked a little way she looked back over her shoulder to see him leaning
idly against the post, gazing after her, and waving his hammer in
friendly fashion.

For a while her feet fairly flew, and her heart beat tumultuously,
keeping time with her racing thoughts. She walked about the Common,
seeing nothing, paying no attention to the passers-by, who glanced at her
curiously. But at length as she grew calmer the needs of a youthful and
vigorous body became imperative, and realizing suddenly that she was
tired and hungry, sought and found the little restaurant in the village
below. She journeyed back to Hampton pondering what this man had said to
her; speculating, rather breathlessly, whether he had been impelled to
conversation by a natural kindness and courtesy, or whether he really had
discovered something in her worthy of addressing, as he implied.
Resentment burned in her breast, she became suddenly blinded by tears:
she might never see him again, and if only she were "educated" she might
know him, become his friend. Even in this desire she was not
conventional, and in the few moments of their contact he had developed
rather than transformed what she meant by "education." She thought of it
not as knowledge reeking of books and schools, but as the acquirement of
the freemasonry which he so evidently possessed, existence on terms of
understanding, confidence, and freedom with nature; as having the world
open up to one like a flower filled with colour and life. She thought of
the robin, of the tree whose secrets he had learned, of a mental range
including even that medley of human beings amongst whom she lived. And