"You may stop swinging me now. I think I'd like to go out rowing." The
young man's cup seemed running over. He could scarcely command his voice
for delight as he said--

"It will be jolly rowing just now. I'm sure we can get some pond-lilies."

"Really," she replied, airily, "you take too much for granted. I was
going to ask Tom Longman to take me out."

She called to Tom, and as he came up, grinning and shambling, she
indicated to him her pleasure that he should row her upon the river. The
idea of being alone in a small boat for perhaps fifteen minutes with the
belle of Newville, and the object of his own secret and distant
adoration, paralysed Tom's faculties with an agony of embarrassment. He
grew very red, and there was such a buzzing in his ears that he could not
feel sure he heard aright, and Madeline had to repeat herself several
times before he seemed to fully realize the appalling nature of the
proposition. As they walked down to the shore she chatted with him, but
he only responded with a profusion of vacant laughs. When he had pulled
out on the river, his rowing, from his desire to make an excuse for not
talking, was so tremendous that they cheered him from the shore, at the
same time shouting--

"Keep her straight! You're going into the bank!"

The truth was, that Tom could not guide the boat because he did not dare
to look astern for fear of meeting Madeline's eyes, which, to judge from
the space his eyes left around her, he must have supposed to fill at
least a quarter of the horizon, like an aurora, in fact. But, all the