Dorian has told me about you, too." Thus these two, meeting for the first time, went on chatting together; and thus Dorian saw them.

He had missed Mildred at the lower pasture, and so, with shovel again on shoulder, he had followed up the homeward path.

The girls were some distance ahead, so he did not try to overtake them.

In fact, he slackened his pace a little, so as not to get too close to them to disturb them; but he saw them plainly walk close together up the road in the twilight of the summer evening, the tall, light-haired Mildred, and the shorter, dark-haired Carlia; and the child in Dorian seemed to vanish, and the man in him asserted himself in thought and feelings which it would have been hard for him to describe in words..