Tell me, Blossom," he added, touching her shoulder, "have you many lovers ?" She shook her head.

"There are so few about here that any woman would look at." "I've been told that there's an engaging young rector." "Mr.Mullen--well, so he is--and he preaches the most beautiful sermons.
But he fancies Molly Merryweather, they say, like all the others, though he won't be likely to marry anybody from around here, I suppose." Her drawling Southern tongue lent a charm, he felt, to her naive disclosures.
"Like all the others ?" he repeated smiling.

"Do you mean to tell me that Reuben's piquant little granddaughter is a greater belle in the neighbourhood than you are ?" "She has a way with them," said Blossom sweetly.

"I don't know what it is and I am sure she is a good, kind girl--but I sometimes think men like her because she is so contrary.

My Uncle Abel has almost lost his head about her, yet she plays fast and loose with him in the cruelest fashion." "Oh, well, she'll burn her fingers some day, at her own fire, and then she'll be sorry." "I don't want her to be sorry, but I do wish she'd try just a little to be kind--one day she promises to marry Abel and the next you'd think she'd taken a liking to Jim Halloween." "Perhaps she has a secret sentiment for the rector ?" he suggested, to pique her.
"But I don't believe he will marry anybody around here," she insisted, while the colour flooded her face.
The discovery that she had once cherished--that she still cherished, perhaps, a regard for the young clergyman, added a zest to the adventure, while it freed his passion from the single restraint of which he had been aware.