"Oh, I beg your pardon; I thought you spoke of important business."
"Only some affair of my mother's. Nothing I felt any interest in, and she took the state of the weather for an excuse. If I had known that you were in the cars, as I have since heard, I should certainly have persevered, in order to have had the pleasure of walking down Washington Street with you."
"I did not go down Washington Street."
"But you would have done so with a suitable escort," suggested the young man.
"If I had gone out of my way for the sake of accompanying my escort, the escort would have been a very doubtful advantage," said Gertrude, laughing.
"How very practical you are, Miss Gertrude! Do you mean to say that, when you go to the city, you always have a settled plan of operations, and never swerve from your course?"
"By no means. I trust I am not difficult to influence when there is a sufficient motive."
The young man bit his lip. "Then you never act without a motive; pray, what is your motive in wearing that broad-brimmed hat when you are at work in the garden?"
"It is an old habit, adopted some years ago from motives of convenience, and still adhered to, in spite of later inventions, which would certainly be a better protection from the sun. I must plead guilty, I fear, to a little obstinacy in my partiality for that old hat."
"Why not confess, Miss Gertrude, that you wear it in order to look fanciful and picturesque, so that the neighbours' slumbers are disturbed by the thoughts of it? My own morning dreams, for instance, are so haunted by that hat, as seen in company with its owner, that I am daily drawn, as if by magnetic attraction, in the direction of the garden. You will have a heavy account to settle with Morpheus, one of these days, for defrauding him of his rights; and your conscience too will suffer for injuries to my health, sustained by continued exposure to early dews."