It isn't often I get the chance of riding with the prettiest girl in the county.

There now, I've made you blush, as I used to when you sat upon my knee, and I told you that little girls had no right to stars for eyes." Ida laughed.
"But I'm a big girl now," she said, "and too old for compliments; besides, lawyers should always speak the truth." "For goodness sake! don't spread that theory, my dear, or we shall all have to put our shutters up," he retorted, with mock alarm.
He got on his old red-roan rather stiffly, and they rode out of the court-yard and on to the road, where, be sure, Ida's "star-like" eyes swept the hills and the valleys lest perchance a young man should be riding there.

They rode in silence for a few minutes, during which the old lawyer seemed very thoughtful, and glanced at her sideways, as if he were trying to make up his mind about something.

At last he said, with an affectation of casualness: "Father been pretty well of late, my dear ?" Ida hesitated for a moment.

She could not bring herself to tell even Mr.Wordley of her father's painful habit of walking in his sleep.
"Yes," she said, "fairly well.