advance, a last cautious pause, was made by the ducks. The
bailiff touched the strings, the weighed net-work fell vertically
into the water, and closed the decoy. There, by dozens and
dozens, were the ducks, caught by means of their own
curiosity--with nothing but a little dog for a bait! In a few
hours afterward they were all dead ducks on their way to the
London market.

As the last act in the curious comedy of the decoy came to its
end, little Mary laid her hand on my shoulder, and, raising
herself on tiptoe, whispered in my ear:

"George, come home with me. I have got something to show you that
is better worth seeing than the ducks."

"What is it?"

"It's a surprise. I won't tell you."

"Will you give me a kiss?"

The charming little creature put her slim sun-burned arms round
my neck, and answered:

"As many kisses as you like, George."

It was innocently said, on her side. It was innocently done, on
mine. The good easy bailiff, looking aside at the moment from his
ducks, discovered us pursuing our boy-and-girl courtship in each
other's arms. He shook his big forefinger at us, with something
of a sad and doubting smile.

"Ah, Master George, Master George!" he said. "When your father
comes home, do you think he will approve of his son and heir
kissing his bailiff's daughter?"

"When my father comes home," I answered, with great dignity, "I
shall tell him the truth. I shall say I am going to marry your
daughter."

The bailiff burst out laughing, and looked back again at his
ducks.

"Well, well!" we heard him say to himself. "They're only
children. There's no call, poor things, to part them yet awhile."

Mary and I had a great dislike to be called children. Properly
understood, one of us was a lady aged ten, and the other was a
gentleman aged thirteen. We left the good bailiff indignantly,
and went away together, hand in hand, to the cottage.

CHAPTER II.

TWO YOUNG HEARTS.

"HE is growing too fast," said the doctor to my mother; "and he
is getting a great deal too clever for a boy at his age. Remove
him from school, ma'am, for six months; let him run about in the
open air at home; and if you find him with a book in his hand,
take it away directly. There is my prescription."

Those words decided my fate in life.

In obedience to the doctor's advice, I was left an idle
boy--without brothers, sisters, or companions of my own age--to
roam about the grounds of our lonely country-house. The bailiff's
daughter, like me, was an only child; and, like me, she had no
playfellows. We met in our wanderings on the solitary shores of
the lake. Beginning by being inseparable companions, we ripened
and developed into true lovers. Our preliminary courtship
concluded, we next proposed (before I returned to school) to
burst into complete maturity by becoming man and wife.

I am not writing in jest. Absurd as it may appear to "sensible
people," we two children were lovers, if ever there were lovers
yet.

We had no pleasures apart from the one all-sufficient pleasure
which we found in each other's society. We objected to the night,
because it parted us. We entreated our parents, on either side,
to let us sleep in the same room. I was angry with my mother, and
Mary was disappointed in her father, when they laughed at us, and
wondered what we should want next. Looking onward, from those
days to the days of my manhood, I can vividly recall such hours
of happiness as have fallen to my share. But I remember no
delights of that later time comparable to the exquisite and
enduring pleasure that filled my young being when I walked with
Mary in the woods; when I sailed with Mary in my boat on the
lake; when I met Mary, after the cruel separation of the night,
and flew into her open arms as if we had been parted for months
and months together.

What was the attraction that drew us so closely one to the other,
at an age when the sexual sympathies lay dormant in her and in
me?

We neither knew nor sought to know. We obeyed the impulse to love
one another, as a bird obeys the impulse to fly.

Let it not be supposed that we possessed any natural gifts, or


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