Mrs. Flanders flushed with anger.

"How many times have I told you?" she cried, and seized him and snatched
his stick away from him.

"But they'd escaped!" he cried, struggling to get free.

"You're a very naughty boy. If I've told you once, I've told you a
thousand times. I won't have you chasing the geese!" she said, and
crumpling Mr. Floyd's letter in her hand, she held Johnny fast and
herded the geese back into the orchard.

"How could I think of marriage!" she said to herself bitterly, as she
fastened the gate with a piece of wire. She had always disliked red hair
in men, she thought, thinking of Mr. Floyd's appearance, that night when
the boys had gone to bed. And pushing her work-box away, she drew the
blotting-paper towards her, and read Mr. Floyd's letter again, and her
breast went up and down when she came to the word "love," but not so
fast this time, for she saw Johnny chasing the geese, and knew that it
was impossible for her to marry any one--let alone Mr. Floyd, who was so
much younger than she was, but what a nice man--and such a scholar too.

"Dear Mr. Floyd," she wrote.--"Did I forget about the cheese?" she
wondered, laying down her pen. No, she had told Rebecca that the cheese
was in the hall. "I am much surprised..." she wrote.

But the letter which Mr. Floyd found on the table when he got up early
next morning did not begin "I am much surprised," and it was such a
motherly, respectful, inconsequent, regretful letter that he kept it for
many years; long after his marriage with Miss Wimbush, of Andover; long