"Abel!" she called softly, and paused with one foot on the log while the water sparkled beneath her. Ten minutes before he had vowed to himself that she had used him badly and he would hold off until she made sufficient amends; but in forming this resolution, he had reckoned without the probable intervention of Molly.
"I thought—as long as I was going by—that I'd stop and speak to you," she said.
He shook his head, unsoftened as yet by her presence. "You didn't treat me fair yesterday, Molly," he answered.
"Oh, I wanted to tell you about that. I quite meant to go with you—only it went out of my head."
"That's a pretty excuse, isn't it, to offer a man?"
"Well, you aren't the only one I've offered it to," she dimpled enchantingly, "the rector had to be satisfied with it as well. He asked me, too, and when I forgot I'd promised you, I said I'd go with him to see old Abigail. Then I forgot that, too," she added with a penitent sigh, "and went down to the low grounds."
"You managed to come up in time to meet Mr. Jonathan at the cross-roads," he commented with bitterness.
A less daring adventurer than Molly would have hesitated at his tone and grown cautious, but a certain blithe indifference to the consequences of her actions was a part of her lawless inheritance from the Gays.
"I think him very good-looking, don't you?" she inquired sweetly.
"Good-looking? I should think not—a fat fop like that."