"You are very kind," says Monica slowly, feeling not so much embarrassment as surprise at this sudden advent.
Then the young man looses the rope, and, having done so, casts a cursory glance at the boat to which it is attached. As he does so, he lifts his brows.
"Surely you are not dreaming of going on the river in that!" he says, indicating the wretched punt by a contemptuous wave of his hand.
"There isn't a sound bit of timber in her. What can your people be thinking of, to let you trust yourself in such a miserable affair?"
"My people have nothing to do with it," says Monica, somewhat grandly. "I am my own mistress."
She has picked up her flowers again out of the despised punt, and now stands before him with her hands filled with the June blossoms, blue, and white, and red. They show bravely against the pallor of her gown, and seem, indeed, to harmonize altogether with her excessive fairness, for her lips are as red as her poppies, and her cornflowers as blue as her eyes, and her skin puts her drooping daisies all to shame.
"As you are your own mistress," says the young man, with a suspicion of a smile, as he takes in the baby sweetness of her mouth, and each detail of her slight girlish figure, that bespeaks the child rather than the woman, "I entreat you to have mercy upon yourself."
"But what is the matter with it?" asks Monica, peering into the boat. "It looks all right; I can't see a hole in it."
"It's nothing but holes, in my opinion," says the strange young man, peering in his turn. "It's a regular coffin. You will be committing nothing less than suicide if you put your foot in it."