CHAPTER XXVI.
THE NECKLACE.
This was Redbud.
The poor girl presented a great contrast to the lively Fanny, who, with sparkling eyes and merry lips, and rosy, sunset cheeks, afforded an excellent idea of the joyous Maia, as she trips on gathering her lovely flowers.

Poor Redbud! Her head was hanging down, her eyes wandered sadly and thoughtfully toward the distant autumn horizon, and the tender lips wore that expression of soft languor which is so sad a spectacle in the young.
At Mr.Ralph Ashley's bow, she raised her head quickly; and her startled look showed plainly she had not been conscious of the presence of Fanny, or the young man on the portico.
Redbud returned the profound bow of Fanny's cavalier with a delightful little curtsey, and would have retired into the house again.

But this Miss Fanny, for reasons best known to herself, was determined to prevent--reasons which a close observer might have possibly guessed, after looking at her blushing cheeks and timid, uneasy eyes.

For everybody knows that if there is anything more distasteful and embarrassing to very young ladies than a failure on the part of gallants to recognise their claims to attention, that other more embarrassing circumstance is a too large _quantum_ of the pleasing incense.

It is not the present writer, however, who will go so far as to say that their usual habit of running _away_ from the admirer should be taken, as in other feminine manoeuvres, by contraries.
So Fanny duly introduced Mr.Ralph Ashley to Miss Redbud Summers; and then, with a little masonic movement of the head, added, with perfect ease: "Suppose we all take a walk in the garden--it is a very pretty evening." This proposition was enthusiastically seconded by Mr.Ralph Ashley, who had regained his laughing ease again--and though Redbud would fain have been excused, she was obliged to yield, and so in ten minutes they were promenading up and down the old garden, engaged in pleasant conversation--which conversation has, however, nothing to do with this veracious history.
Just as they arrived, in one of their perambulatory excursions around the walks, at a small gate which opened on the hill-side, they discovered approaching them a worthy of the pedlar description, who carried on his broad German shoulders a large pack, which, as the pedlar jogged along, made, pretences continually of an intention to dive forward over his head, but always without carrying this intention into execution.