Dixon was silent for a minute or two, while she tried to turn off his
attention by her hurried prattle.

"There's no trouble afoot that I can mend?" asked he, in a minute or two.

"Oh, no! It's really nothing--nothing at all," said she. "It's only
that Mr. Corbet went away without saying good-bye to me, that's all." And
she looked as if she should have liked to cry again.

"That was not manners," said Dixon, decisively.

"But it was my fault," replied Ellinor, pleading against the
condemnation.

Dixon looked at her pretty sharply from under his ragged bushy eyebrows.

"He had been giving me a lecture, and saying I didn't do what his sisters
did--just as if I were to be always trying to be like somebody else--and
I was cross and ran away."

"Then it was Missy who wouldn't say good-bye. That was not manners in
Missy."

"But, Dixon, I don't like being lectured!"

"I reckon you don't get much of it. But, indeed, my pretty, I daresay
Mr. Corbet was in the right; for, you see, master is busy, and Miss Monro
is so dreadful learned, and your poor mother is dead and gone, and you
have no one to teach you how young ladies go on; and by all accounts Mr.
Corbet comes of a good family. I've heard say his father had the best