"I didn't know you had come to ask to have me, or I should have come in from the garden instantly.

I ran after you to say--that my aunt made a mistake in sending you away from courting me--" Gabriel expanded.

"I'm sorry to have made you run so fast, my dear," he said, with a grateful sense of favours to come.

"Wait a bit till you've found your breath." "-- It was quite a mistake--aunt's telling you I had a young man already," Bathsheba went on.

"I haven't a sweetheart at all--and I never had one, and I thought that, as times go with women, it was SUCH a pity to send you away thinking that I had several." "Really and truly I am glad to hear that!" said Farmer Oak, smiling one of his long special smiles, and blushing with gladness.