Mat, coming in the back way soon afterwards, happened to meet the gardener, who was a great friend of his, with a book in his hand, walking towards his cottage.
“What book is that?” asked Mat.
“‘Robinson Crusoe,’” answered the man.
“Why, that’s the very book Master Tom told me to get and read; I wish you’d lend it me.”
“I can’t,” answered the gardener, “it belongs to Miss Annie, and she wants it back.”
“Oh! well, then, never mind,” answered Mat, as he passed into the gun-room with the game-bag.
A few minutes later a young girl flew quickly into the room, and as rapidly said in a breath,—
“Here, Jim says you want to borrow this book; it’s mine; I’ll give it you; you’re so nice to Tom. I’ve written your name in it to show it’s your very own. I’ll lend Jim another some day.”
Mat had only time to take off his cap and say, “Thank you, miss,” blushing to his ears as he took the book, when the fair young apparition was gone.
On recounting the circumstance to Tim afterwards, he said that he could “only remember a girl out of breath, with eyes like a fawn, a complexion like a rose, and hair all down her back, which was just the colour of the tail of old Broomfield’s colt—the foxy one—and she came and went a’most afore I could zay ‘knife.’”