"To serve me, Robert, you must serve your country!"
"And to serve my country, most dear lady, I must serve the king!" persisted Robert.
Barbara set her lips tight together, and galloped on.
"I wish you better wisdom as you grow older!" she said, coldly, after some minutes.
"The best wisdom I may ever hope to attain will be all too little to serve you with, my lady!" answered Robert, half gallantly, yet all in earnest. And Barbara could not but vouchsafe a reluctant smile in acknowledgment of so handsome a compliment. Thereafter there was little more said. They rode through the village, past the lighted inn, up the dim moonlit road to the porch of Westings House. But when Robert, with a sort of bold deference, lifted her from her saddle, holding her, perhaps, just a shade more closely than was requisite, she felt in a forgiving mood. She knew that she liked him, she knew she had been unpleasant to him, she was most sorry he was going away; and what were old kings anyway that friends should be at loggerheads about them? Answering her own thought, she impulsively pulled off her glove, and gave Robert her bare hand.
"We will be friends, won't we, king or no king?"
And the radiance of the smile she lifted to him, as he held her thin little hand in both his own, nearly turned the poor boy's head. He bent over her—and just saved himself, with a gasp, from kissing the ignorantly provocative mouth so rashly upraised. But he recovered his balance, in part, and compensated himself by kissing the hand passionately,—fingers and soft palm, and rosy oval nails, and wrist,—in a fashion that seemed to Barbara very singular. At length she withdrew the hand with a soft laugh, saying, composedly:
"There, don't you think that will do, Robert? You did not kiss Mrs. Sawyer's hand like that, did you?"
"Of course I did!" declared Robert. "There was more of it to kiss, so I kissed it more!"
"Now you are horrid!" she cried, and ran past him into the house.