sort of fellow I am? No: don't shake your head, because you know it as
well as I do. I ain't a gentleman, and if I'd twenty million times as
much money it wouldn't make a gentleman of me."

"And I say you are a gentleman, Mr Burge--a true, honest, nature's
gentleman, such as no birth, position, or appearance could make."

"No, no, no, my dear," he said sadly; "I'm only a common man, who has
been lucky and grown rich--that's all."

"I say that you are a true gentleman, Mr Burge," she cried again, "and
that you are showing it by your tender respect and consideration for a
poor, helpless, friendless girl."

"No: that you ain't, my dear," he cried with spirit; "not friendless;
for as long as God lets William Forth Burge breathe on this earth, with
money or without money, you've got a friend as'll never forsake you, or
say an unkind--lor', just as if one could say an unkind word to you; I
couldn't even give you an unkind look. Why, I don't, even now, when
what you've said has cut me to the heart."

"I couldn't--I couldn't help it, Mr Burge," she cried.

"I suppose you couldn't, my dear; but if you could have said _yes_ to
me, and been my little wife--it isn't money as I care to talk about to
you--but the way in which I'd reglar downright worship you, and care for
them as belongs to you, and the way in which you should do everything
you liked, and have what you liked--There, I get lost with trying to
think about it," he said dolefully, "and I go all awkward over my
grammar, as you, being a schoolmistress, must see, and make myself worse
and worse in your eyes, and ten times more common than ever."

"No, no, no!" she cried excitedly; "I never, never thought half so much
of you before, Mr Burge, as I do now. I never realised how true a
gentleman you were, and how painful it would be to say to you what I now
say. I do appreciate it--I do know how kind and generous you are to
wish to make me your wife--now, in this time of bitter disgrace."

"Tchah!" he cried contemptuously; "who cares for the disgrace? I'd just
as soon believe that the sun and moon had run up again' one another in
the night as that you had taken the beggarly school pence. Don't say
another word about it, my dear: it makes me mad, as I told Miss Rebecca
and Miss Beatrice yesterday. I said it was a pack of humbugging lies,
and they ought to be ashamed of themselves for believing it. I know who
had--"

"Hush! oh, pray hush!" cried Hazel piteously.