"Why do you wear pattens, Marty? The turnpike is clean enough, although
the lanes are muddy."

"They save my boots."

"But twelve miles in pattens--'twill twist your feet off. Come, get up
and ride with me."

She hesitated, removed her pattens, knocked the gravel out of them
against the wheel, and mounted in front of the nodding specimen
apple-tree. She had so arranged her bonnet with a full border and
trimmings that her lack of long hair did not much injure her
appearance; though Giles, of course, saw that it was gone, and may have
guessed her motive in parting with it, such sales, though infrequent,
being not unheard of in that locality.

But nature's adornment was still hard by--in fact, within two feet of
him, though he did not know it. In Marty's basket was a brown paper
packet, and in the packet the chestnut locks, which, by reason of the
barber's request for secrecy, she had not ventured to intrust to other
hands.

Giles asked, with some hesitation, how her father was getting on.

He was better, she said; he would be able to work in a day or two; he
would be quite well but for his craze about the tree falling on him.

"You know why I don't ask for him so often as I might, I suppose?" said
Winterborne. "Or don't you know?"

"I think I do."