"Such a quantity! We've left a whole basketful in the dairy. Mr. Farquhar says he'll teach us how to dress them in the way he learnt in Germany, if we can get him some hock. Do you think papa will let us have some?" "Was Mr. Farquhar with you?" asked Jemima, a dull light coming into her eyes. "Yes; we told him this morning that mamma wanted us to take some old linen to the lame man at Scaurside Farm, and that we meant to coax Mrs. Denbigh to let us go into the wood and gather strawberries," said Elizabeth. "I thought he would make some excuse and come," said the quick-witted Mary, as eager and thoughtless an observer of one love-affair as of another, and quite forgetting that, not many weeks ago, she had fancied an attachment between him and Jemima. "Did you? I did not," replied Elizabeth. "At least I never thought about it. I was quite startled when I heard his horse's feet behind us on the road." "He said he was going to the farm, and could take our basket. Was it not kind of him?" Jemima did not answer, so Mary continued-- "You know it's a great pull up to the farm, and we were so hot already.
The road was quite white and baked; it hurt my eyes terribly. I was so glad when Mrs. Denbigh said we might turn into the wood. The light was quite green there, the branches are so thick overhead." "And there are whole beds of wild strawberries," said Elizabeth, taking up the tale now Mary was out of breath. Mary fanned herself with her bonnet, while Elizabeth went on-- "You know where the grey rock crops out, don't you, Jemima? Well, there was a complete carpet of strawberry-runners. So pretty! And we could hardly step without treading the little bright scarlet berries under foot." "We did so wish for Leonard," put in Mary. "Yes! but Mrs. Denbigh gathered a great many for him. And Mr. Farquhar gave her all his." "I thought you said he bad gone on to Dawson's farm," said Jemima. "Oh yes! he just went up there; and then he left his horse there, like a wise man, and came to us in the pretty, cool, green wood. O Jemima! it was so pretty-little flecks of light coming down here and there through the leaves, and quivering on the ground. You must go with us to-morrow." "Yes," said Mary, "we're going again to-morrow. We could not gather nearly all the strawberries." "And Leonard is to go too, to-morrow." "Yes! we thought of such a capital plan. That's to say, Mr. Farquhar thought of it--we wanted to carry Leonard up the hill in a king's cushion, but Mrs. Denbigh would not hear of it." "She said it would tire us so; and yet she wanted him to gather strawberries!" "And so," interrupted Mary, for by this time the two girls were almost speaking together, "Mr. Farquhar is to bring him up before him on his horse." "You'll go with us, won't you, dear Jemima?" asked Elizabeth: "it will be at----" "No! I can't go," said Jemima abruptly. "Don't ask me--I can't." The little girls were hushed into silence by her manner; for whatever she might be to those above her in age and position, to those below her Jemima was almost invariably gentle She felt that they were wondering at her. "Go upstairs and take off your things. You know papa does not like you to come into this room in the shoes in which you have been out." She was glad to out her sisters short in the details which they were so mercilessly inflicting--details which she must harden herself to, before she could hear them quietly and unmoved. She saw that she had lost her place as the first object in Mr. Farquhar's eyes--a position she had hardly cared for while she was secure in the enjoyment of it; but the charm of it now was redoubled, in her acute sense of how she had forfeited it by her own doing, and her own fault. For if he were the cold, calculating man her father had believed him to be, and had represented him as being to her, would he care for a portionless widow in humble circumstances like Mrs. Denbigh--no money, no connection, encumbered with her boy? The very action which proved Mr. Farquhar to be lost to Jemima reinstated him on his throne in her fancy. And she must go on in hushed quietness, quivering with every fresh token of his preference for another? That other, too, one so infinitely more worthy of him than herself; so that she could not have even the poor comfort of thinking that he had no discrimination, and was throwing himself away on a common or worthless person. Ruth was beautiful, gentle, good, and conscientious. The hot colour flushed up into Jemima's sallow face as she became aware that, even while she acknowledged these excellences on Mrs. Denbigh's part, she hated her. The recollection of her marble face wearied her even to sickness; the tones of her low voice were irritating from their very softness. Her goodness, undoubted as it was, was more distasteful than many faults which had more savour of human struggle in them. "What was this terrible demon in her heart?" asked Jemima's better angel.