Maria felt that she no longer cared about Wollaston Lee, that she fairly scorned him.

Then, suddenly, something occurred to her.

She turned, and ran back as fast as she could, her short fleece of golden hair flying.

She wrapped her short skirts about her, and wormed through the barbed-wire fence which skirted the field--the boy had leaped it, but she was not equal to that--and she hastened, leaving a furrow through the white-and-gold herbage, to the boy lying on his face weeping.

She stood over him.
"Say ?" said she.
The boy gave a convulsive wriggle of his back and shoulders, and uttered an inarticulate "Let me alone"; but the girl persisted.
"Say ?" said she again.
Then the boy turned, and disclosed a flushed, scowling face among the flowers.
"Well, what do you want, anyway ?" said he.
"If you want to marry Miss Slome, why don't you, instead of my father ?" inquired Maria, bluntly, going straight to the point.
"I haven't got any money," replied Wollaston, crossly; "all a woman thinks of is money.