About a hundred." (In speaking of farms the word "acres" is omitted by the natives, by analogy to such old expressions as "a stag of ten.") "I wanted my hat this morning," she went on.

"I had to ride to Tewnell Mill." "Yes you had." "How do you know ?" "I saw you." "Where ?" she inquired, a misgiving bringing every muscle of her lineaments and frame to a standstill.
"Here--going through the plantation, and all down the hill," said Farmer Oak, with an aspect excessively knowing with regard to some matter in his mind, as he gazed at a remote point in the direction named, and then turned back to meet his colloquist's eyes.
A perception caused him to withdraw his own eyes from hers as suddenly as if he had been caught in a theft.

Recollection of the strange antics she had indulged in when passing through the trees was succeeded in the girl by a nettled palpitation, and that by a hot face.

It was a time to see a woman redden who was not given to reddening as a rule; not a point in the milkmaid but was of the deepest rose-colour.

From the Maiden's Blush, through all varieties of the Provence down to the Crimson Tuscany, the countenance of Oak's acquaintance quickly graduated; whereupon he, in considerateness, turned away his head.
The sympathetic man still looked the other way, and wondered when she would recover coolness sufficient to justify him in facing her again.
He heard what seemed to be the flitting of a dead leaf upon the breeze, and looked.