this. Do not allow a trivial misunderstanding to wither the blossoms of spring, which, once put forth and blighted, cannot be renewed.

I speak,’ said Miss Mills, ‘from experience of the past — the remote, irrevocable past. The gushing fountains which sparkle in the sun, must not be stopped in mere caprice; the oasis in the desert of Sahara must not be plucked up idly.’

I hardly knew what I did, I was burning all over to that extraordinary extent; but I took Dora’s little hand and kissed it — and she let me! I kissed Miss Mills’s hand; and we all seemed, to my thinking, to go straight up to the seventh heaven.

We did not come down again. We stayed up there all the evening. At first we strayed to and fro among the trees: