s not
free to ask Winny Dymond. He had thought he was, but his mother had made
him see that he wasn't, because of his father's Headache; that he really
ought not to expose the poor old Humming-bird to the rude criticism of
people who did not know how good he was. That was what his mother, bless
her! had been trying to make him see. And if it came to exposing, if
this was to be a fair sample of their Sundays, if the Humming-bird was
going to take the cake for queerness, what right had he to expose little
Winny?

And would she stand it if he did? She might come once, perhaps, but not
again. The Humming-bird would be a bit too much for her.

Then how on earth, Ranny asked himself, was he going to get any further
with a girl like Winny? His acquaintance with her was bound to be a
furtive and a secret thing. He loathed anything furtive, and he hated
secrecy. And Winny would loathe and hate them, too. And she might turn
on him and ask him why she was to be made love to in the streets when
his mother had a house and he lived in it?

It was the first time that this idea of making love had come to him. Of
course he had always supposed that he would marry some day; but as for
making love, it was his mother who had put into his head that
exquisitely agitating idea.

To make love to little Winny and to marry her, if (and that was not by
any means so certain) she would have him--no idea could well have
agitated Ranny more. It blunted the fine razorlike edge of his appetite
for Sunday supper. It obscured his interest in _The Pink 'Un_, which he
had unearthed from under the sofa cushion in the back parlor, whither he
had withdrawn himself to think of it. And thinking of it took away the
best part of his Sunday night's sleep.

For, after all, it was impossible; and the more you thought of it the
more impossible it was. He couldn't marry. He simply couldn't afford it
on a salary of eight pounds a month, which was a little under a hundred
a year. He couldn't even afford it on his rise. Fellows did. But he
considered it was a beastly shame of them; yes, a beastly shame it was
to go and tie a girl to you when you couldn't keep her properly, to say
nothing of letting her in for having kids you couldn't keep at all.
Ranny had very fixed and firm opinions about marrying; for he had seen
fellows doing it, rushing bald-headed into this tremendous business,
for no reason but that they had got so gone on some girl they couldn't
stick it wit