Crossjay shouted. Willoughby turned his head, but not his horse's head.
The boy sprang up to Clara. He had swum across the lake and back; he
had raced Mr. Whitford--and beaten him! How he wished Miss Middleton
had been able to be one of them!

Clara listened to him enviously. Her thought was: We women are nailed
to our sex!

She said: "And you have just been talking to Sir Willoughby."

Crossjay drew himself up to give an imitation of the baronet's
hand-moving in adieu.

He would not have done that had he not smelled sympathy with the
performance.

She declined to smile. Crossjay repeated it, and laughed. He made a
broader exhibition of it to Vernon approaching: "I say. Mr. Whitford,
who's this?"

Vernon doubled to catch him. Crossjay fled and resumed his magnificent
air in the distance.

"Good-morning, Miss Middleton; you are out early," said Vernon, rather
pale and stringy from his cold swim, and rather hard-eyed with the
sharp exercise following it.

She had expected some of the kindness she wanted to reject, for he
could speak very kindly, and she regarded him as her doctor of