As she peeped furtively at this young man, so suddenly grown formidable, as he reclined carelessly on the ground at her feet, she admitted to herself that there was something very manly in the sturdy figure and square forehead, with the curly black locks hanging over it.
She looked at him with a new interest, half shrinking, half attracted, as one who might come into a very close relation with herself.

She scarcely knew whether the thought was agreeable or not.
"Give me your hat," she said, "and I'll put some lilies in it." "You are very good," said he, handing it to her.
"Does it strike you so ?" she replied, hesitatingly.

"Then I won't do it.
I don't want to appear particularly good to you.

I didn't know just how it would seem." "Oh, it won't seem very good; only about middling," he urged, upon which representation she took the hat.
He watched her admiringly as she deftly wreathed the lilies around it, holding it up, now this way and now that, while she critically inspected the effect.
Then her caprice changed.

"I've half a mind to drop it into the river.
Would you jump after it ?" she said, twirling it by the brim, and looking over the steep bank, near which she sat, into the deep, dark water almost perpendicularly below.
"If it were anything of yours instead of mine, I would jump quickly enough," he replied.
She looked at him with a reckless gleam in her eyes.
"You mustn't talk chaff to me, sir; we'll see," and, snatching a glove from her pocket, she held it out over the water.