s before him.

It was no doubt to that refusal of his that he owed Violet's consent.

His family were appalled at the news of Ranny's engagement. It was so
unexpected, so unlike him; and how it had happened Ranny's mother
couldn't think. She knew all his comings and goings for the last year.
His temperance and discretion had given her a sense of imperishable
security. She had made up her mind that Ranny wasn't one to be in a
hurry; and now she had been right only in her prophecy that when his
time came there would be no holding him.

And there _was_ no holding him.

They had all tried it. They had all been at him; his Uncle Randall and
his Aunt Randall, and his mother and his father. For the first time in
his life Mr. Ransome was roused to take an interest in his son, to
acknowledge him as an adult, capable of formidably adult things. And
though they all told him that he was too young to know his own mind,
that he was doing foolish, and behaving silly, under the show of
disapproval and disparagement it was clear that they respected him, that
they realized his manhood, and that he was somehow important to them as
he had never been important in his life before.

What was more, rage as they would at it, they were impressed by Ranny's
firmness, his unalterable and imperturbable determination to marry, and
to marry the unknown Violet Usher.

And on the main issue they gave way. They owned that it was natural that
the boy should want to marry; they saw that he would have to marry some
day; and his mother went so far as to say she wanted him to marry and to
settle down. What they did not understand, and most certainly did not
approve of, what they did their best to talk him out of, was the awful
hurry he was in. There wasn't any hurry, they said, there shouldn't be,
when he was so young. He couldn't afford to marry now, but he could
afford it very well in two years' time. Why, he was only twenty-three,
and in two years' time he'd have got his next rise, and he'd have saved
more money.

"If you'd wait, Ranny," said his mother, "but the two years." And his
father and his uncle said he _must_ wait.

But Ranny wouldn't. He wouldn't wait six months. No, and he wouldn't
wait three months and look about him. He wouldn't have waited three
weeks if it hadn't been for the banns. It was no use their talking.

They knew it. It had been no use their talking seven years ago, when
Ranny had refused to become a Pharmaceutical Chemis