Nevertheless the arrangement as proposed was made, and the two ladies were not at all unwilling to make it.

It is thus that the game is carried on among unsophisticated people who really live in the country.

The farmyard gate at Farmer Gruddock's has not a fitting sound as a trysting-place in romance, but for people who are in earnest it does as well as any oak in the middle glade of a forest.

Lily Dale was quite in earnest--and so indeed was Adolphus Crosbie,--only with him the earnest was beginning to take that shade of brown which most earnest things have to wear in this vale of tears.

With Lily it was as yet all rose-coloured.