For a little while he watched her, as she hummed a song amongst the flowers and added fresh treasures to the already overgrown bouquet in her hand.
"If she would take a man just as he is, she would make a sweet little wife for a Cariboo miner," thought the young man; "that is, if he meant always to remain a Cariboo miner. But, poor child! I'm afraid she'd find a Shropshire welcome rather chilly even after Cariboo. Ah! well," he added to himself as he went jumping over the boulders to meet her, "luckily I don't want a wife, and Lilla doesn't want a husband."
The next moment Lilla and he stood face to face.
"Did I frighten you, Lilla?" he asked, picking up some flowers which the girl had dropped. "Did you think I was a grizzly?"
"Not so bad as that, Ned. But what do you up here?"
"I'm taking a 'cultus coolee,'" replied he, using the Indian phrase in use among the miners for a walk which has no object. "You are doing the same, I fancy. Let us do it together."
"What! you wish to come with me? Well, come then," replied Lilla. "You can help me carry these."
Ned took the bouquet, and after a while said, "I have been wanting to have a good talk with you, Lilla, for some time."
"So, Ned! what is it about?" She tried hard to speak in an unconcerned off-hand way, but in spite of her, her colour rose and then paled, and her voice had an unnatural ring in it. Ned looked at her. Could there be anything in what Steve suggested the other night? he asked himself, and then almost in the same second he repented him of the thought. Ned Corbett was not one of those men who twist their moustaches complacently, and conclude that every woman they meet must fall in love with them.