Where the narrow path ran westward for a little way, so that she
could see nothing for the sun in her eyes, in the middle of a
plowed field she would have run right against a gentleman, had he
been as blind as she; but, his back being to the sun, he saw her
perfectly, and stepped out of her way into the midst of a patch
of stiff soil, where the rain was yet lying between the furrows.
She saw him then, and as, lifting his hat, he stopped again upon
the path, she recognized Mr. Wardour.
"Oh, your nice boots!" she cried, in the childlike distress of a
simple soul discovering itself the cause of catastrophe, for his
boots were smeared all over with yellow clay.
"It only serves me right," returned Mr. Wardour, with a laugh of
amusement. "I oughtn't to have put on such thin ones at the first
smile of summer."
Again he lifted his hat, and walked on.
Mary also pursued her path, genuinely though gently pained that
one should have stepped up to the ankles in mud on her account.
As I have already said, except in the shop she had never before
spoken to Mr. Wardour, and, although he had so simply responded
to her exclamation, he did not even know who she was.
The friendship which now drew Mary to Thornwick, Godfrey
Wardour's place, was not one of long date. She and Letty Lovel
had, it is true, known each other for years, but only quite of
late had their acquaintance ripened into something better; and it
was not without protestation on the part of Mrs.
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