"I was not in working humor," said Earle.
"Work won't wait for humors," quoth Mark. "And for you, my pretty miss, I don't doubt your sister is making butter and your mother cooking dinner, while you are playing shepherdess under a tree."
"Do I look as if I could work?" laughed Doris, springing to her feet and extending a wee rose-leaf hand. "I am only for ornament, not use. But I will leave Mr. Moray, for 'evil communications corrupt good manners,' and I have made him lazy. Good-bye, poet. 'Blessings brighten as they take their flight;' so I expect to look more and more charming as I depart homeward."
The minx knew that she had done enough that day to turn Earle Moray's head, and it would be well to let the effect deepen in absence. She danced off homeward, and Earle whispered under his breath:
"Against her ankles as she trod,
The lucky buttercups did nod;
I leaned upon the gate to see—
The sweet thing looked, but did not speak—
A dimple came in either cheek,
And all my heart was gone from me!"
Mark Brace looked after his Fairy Changeling in dire perplexity. To him work, honest labor—winning bread from the soil, was noble and happy; in all the words of Doris rang some delicate undertone of irony and scorn, of what he most esteemed. Fair, fair, indeed, but was it not selfish of her to let those whom she deemed her blood, work, and she stay idle? Yes, there was the hundred pounds, and she was not really their blood, but of some idle never-toiling strain.
More and more his hands were bound concerning the beauty, as she grew up in his care. He wished he could explain her to Moray, but he could not. Honor held him to silence. He could warn. He spoke suddenly, laying a hand on the lad's arm.
"Earle, I like you vastly. You are honest, good, a gentleman. I should be sorry indeed to see you giving your time, and mind, and setting your heart on that pretty, idle lass of mine."
"Sorry, Mark? Why sorry? She is sweet and lovely!"
"If it were Mattie, now," said honest Mark, speaking, not as a father or match-maker, but as a man. "Well and good. I'd not say a word. A man's heart may rest in Mattie—Heaven bless her! But Doris is of quite a different strain. In her there is no rest. One could never find rest in her. Never—never."