re advising me about getting married--"

"I didn't mean to advise you, Mr Rubb!"

"I thought you said so."

"But, of course, I did not intend to discuss such a matter
seriously."

"It's a most serious subject to me, Miss Mackenzie."

"No doubt; but it's one I can't know anything about. Men in business
generally do find, I think, that they get on better when they are
married."

"Yes, they do."

"That's all I meant to say, Mr Rubb."

After this he sat silent for a few minutes, and I am inclined to
think that he was weighing in his mind the expediency of asking
her to become Mrs Rubb, on the spur of the moment. But if so, his
mind finally gave judgment against the attempt, and in giving such
judgment his mind was right. He would certainly have so startled
her by the precipitancy of such a proposition, as to have greatly
endangered the probability of any further intimacy with her. As it
was, he changed the conversation, and began to ask questions as to
the welfare of his partner's daughter. At this period of the day
Susanna was at school, and he was informed that she would not be home
till the evening. Then he plucked up courage and begged to be allowed
to come again,--just to look in at eight o'clock, so that he might
see Susanna. He could not go back to London comfortably, unless he
could give some tidings of Susanna to the family in Gower Street.
What was she to do? Of course she was obliged to ask him to drink tea
with them. "That would be so pleasant," he said; and Miss Mackenzie
owned to herself that the gratification expressed in his face as he
spoke was very becoming.

When Susanna came home she did not seem to know much of Mr Rubb,
junior, or to care much about him. Old Mr Rubb lived, she knew, near
the place of business in the New Road, and sometimes he came to Gower
Street, but nobody liked him. She didn't remember that she had ever
seen Mr Rubb, junior, at her mother's house but once, when he came to
dinner. When she was told that Mr Rubb was very anxious to see her,
she chucked up her head and said that the man was a goose.

He came, and in a very few minutes he had talked over Susanna. He
brought her a little present,--a work-box,--which he had bought for
her at Littlebath; and though the work-box itself did not altogether
avail, it paved the way for civil words, which were more efficacious.
On this occasion he talked more to his partner's daughter than to
his partner's sister, and promised to te