She smoothed it back with her hand. Try as she would to keep it trim
after the manner of her people, it still waved loosely on her forehead
and over her ears. And the grey bonnet she wore but added piquancy to
its luxuriance, gave a sweet gravity to the demure beauty of the face it
sheltered.

"I am thirty now," she murmured, with a sigh, and went on writing.

The old man's fingers moved quickly among the strips of cane, and, after
a silence, without raising his head, he said: "Thirty, it means naught."

"To those without understanding," she rejoined drily.

"'Tis tough understanding why there's no wedding-ring on yonder finger.
There's been many a man that's wanted it, that's true--the Squire's son
from Bridgley, the lord of Axwood Manor, the long soldier from Shipley
Wood, and doctors, and such folk aplenty. There's where understanding
fails."

Faith's face flushed, then it became pale, and her eyes, suffused,
dropped upon the paper before her. At first it seemed as though she must
resent his boldness; but she had made a friend of him these years past,
and she knew he meant no rudeness. In the past they had talked of things
deeper and more intimate still. Yet there was that in his words which
touched a sensitive corner of her nature.

"Why should I be marrying?" she asked presently. "There was my sister's
son all those years. I had to care for him."

"Ay, older than him by a thimbleful!" he rejoined.