"Why, no—not ugly. Indeed I didn't mean that."
"But I'm not so handsome as Reverend Orlando?—now, confess it."
She blushed, and he thought her confusion the most charming he had ever seen.
"Well, perhaps you aren't quite so—so handsome; but there's something about you, sir," she added eagerly, "that reminds me of him."
"By Jove! You don't mean it!"
"I can't tell just what it is, but it is something. You both look as though you'd lived in a city and had learned to wear your Sunday clothes without remembering that they are your Sunday clothes. Of course, your hair doesn't curl like his," she added honestly, "and I doubt if you'd look nearly so well in the pulpit."
"I'm very sure I shouldn't, but Blossom—-"
"What, Mr. Jonathan?"
"Do you think you will ever like me as well as you like Mr. Mullen?"
His gay and intimate smile awaited her answer, and in the pause, he stretched out his hand and laid it on her large round arm a little above the elbow. The flush deepened in her face, and he felt a slight trembling under his fingers like the breast of a frightened bird.