She stamped her small foot. "There's no 'Miss' about it. How stupid you are--when you see I'm in a hurry, too! Call me 'Fancy.'"

"Y-yes--Fancy," stammered Palmerston, blushing furiously, shutting his eyes and dropping his voice to a whisper.

"That's better. . . . What does it feel like? Pleasant?"

"V-very pleasant, miss--Fancy, I mean. It--it'll come in time,"

pleaded Palmerston, still red to the eyes.

"That's right, again. Because I want you to marry me, Pammy dear."

"Well! the owdacious!" exclaimed Mrs Bowldler in a kind of hysterical t.i.tter, s.n.a.t.c.hing at her bodice somewhere over the region of her heart.

Fancy paid no heed to her.

"Only we must make a runaway match of it," she went on, "for there's no time to lose, it seems."

For answer Palmerston burst into a flood of tears.

"There now!" Mrs Bowldler of a sudden became serious. "You might have known he's too soft to be teased. . . . Oh, be quiet, do, Palmerston!

Think of your namesake!"

A bell jangled overhead.

"Captain Hocken's bell!--and the child's face all blubbered, which he hates to see, while as for Captain Hunken--there! it that isn't his bell going too in the adjoining! Palmerston, pull yourself together and be a man."

"I c-can't, missus," sobbed Palmerston. "He--he said yesterday as he'd g-give me the sack the next time he saw my eyes red."

"Well, I must take 'em their tea myself, I suppose," said Mrs Bowldler, who had a kind heart. "No, Palmerston, your eyes are not fit. But you see how I'm situated?" she appealed to Fancy.

"Do you usually let them ring for tea?" Fancy asked.

"No, child. There must be something wrong with them both, or else with my clock," answered Mrs Bowldler with a glance up at the timepiece.

"But twenty-five past four, I take you to witness! and I keep it five minutes fast on principle."

"There _is_ something wrong," Fancy a.s.sured her. "If you'll take my advice, you'll go in and look injured."

"I couldn't keep 'em waiting, though injured I will look," promised Mrs Bowldler, catching up one of the two tea-trays. "Palmerston had better withdraw into the grounds and control himself. I will igsplain that I have sent him on an errand connected with the establishment."

She bustled forth. Fancy closed the door after her; then turned and addressed Palmerston.

"Dry your eyes, you silly boy," she commanded. Palmerston obeyed and stood blinking at her--alternately at her and at his handkerchief which he held tightly crumpled into a pad; whereupon she demanded, somewhat cruelly:

"Now, what have you to say for yourself?" He was endeavouring to answer when Mrs Bowldler came running in and caught up the other tea-tray.

"Which it appears," she panted, "he is in a hurry to catch the post; and I hope the Lord will forgive me for saying that Palmerston had just this instant returned and would go with it. But he has it done up in an envelope, and says boys are not to be trusted. When I was a girl in my teens," pursued Mrs Bowldler, luckily discovering that the second teapot had no water in it, and hastening to the kettle, "we learnt out of a Child's Compendium about a so-called ancient G.o.d of the name of Mercury, whence the stuff they put into barometers to go up for fine weather.

He had wings on his boots, or was supposed to: which it would be a convenience in these days, with Palmerston's unfortunate habits.

For goodness' sake, child," she addressed Fancy, "take him out somewhere, that I mayn't perjure myself twice in one day!"

She vanished.

"_Now_, what have you to say for yourself?" Fancy turned again upon Palmerston and repeated her question.

"That's what's the matter with me, Miss--Fancy, I mean," confessed he, after a painful struggle with his emotions. "I never had nothing to say for myself, not in this world: and--and--" he plucked up courage-- "you got no business to play with me the way you did just now!" he blurted.

"Who said I was a-playin' with you?" Fancy demanded; but Palmerston did not heed.

"And right a-top of your sayin' as writin' was unnatural!" he continued.

She stared at him. "What has that to do with it? . . . Besides, whatever you're drivin' at, I didn' mean as all writin' was unnatural.

I got to do enough of it for Mr Rogers, the Lord knows! But for them two, as have spent the best part of their lives navigatin' ships, it do seem--well, we'll call it unmanly somehow."

"That makes it all the worse," growled Palmerston, sticking both hands in his pockets and forcing himself to meet her stare, against which he nodded sullenly. "A man has to lift himself _somehow_--when he wants something, very bad."

"What is it you want?" asked Fancy.

"You know what it is, right enough." He glowered at her hardily, being desperate now and beyond shame.

"Do 'I?" But she blenched, meeting his eyes as be continued to nod.

"Yes, you do," persisted he. "I wants to marry ye, one of these days; and you can't round on me, either, for outin' with it; for 'twas your own suggestion."

"Oh, you silly boy!" Fancy reproved him, while conscious of a highly delicious thrill and an equally delicious fear. ("O, youth, youth! and the wonder of first love!") She cast about for escape, and forced a laugh. "Do you know, you're the very first as has ever proposed to me."

"I was thinkin' as much," said the unflattering Palmerston. "Come to that, you was the first as ever offered marriage to me."

"But I didn't! I mean," urged Fancy, "it was only in joke."

"Joke or not," said Palmerston, "you can't deny it." Suddenly weakening, he let slip his advantage. "But I wouldn' wish to marry one that despised me," he declared. "I had enough o' bein' despised--in the Workhouse."

"I never said I despised you, Pammy," Fancy protested.

"Yes, you did; or in so many words--'Unmanly,' you said."

"But that was about writing." She opened her eyes wide. "You don't mean to tell me _that's_ the trouble? . . . What have you been writing?"

"A book," owned Palmerston with gloom. "A man must try to raise himself somehow."

"Of course he must. What sort of book?"

"It's--it's only a story."

"Why," she rea.s.sured him, "I heard of a man the other day who wrote a story and made A Thousand Pounds. It was quite unexpected, and surprised even his friends."

"It must be the same man Mrs Bowldler told me about. His name was Walter Scott, and he called it 'Waverley' without signing his name to it, because he was a Sheriff; and there was another man that wrote a book called 'Picnic' by Boss, and made pounds. So I've called mine 'Pickerley,' by way of drawing attention,--but, of course, if you think there's no chance, I suppose there isn't," wound up Palmerston, with a sudden access of despondency.

"Oh, Palmerston," exclaimed Fancy, clasping her hands, "if it should only turn out that you're a genius!"

"It _would_ be a bit of all right," he agreed, his cheerfulness reviving.

"I have heard somewhere," she mused, "or perhaps I read it on the newspaper, that men of genius make the very worst husbands, and a woman must be out of her senses to marry one."