er to his handsome house,
just outside the town, and soon after Archibald Graves was making
himself quite at home, drinking the school-patron's sherry, smoking his
cigars, and getting moment by moment more fluent of tongue, and ready to
lay bare the secrets of his heart, if secrets the facts could be called
that he was prepared to make known to any one who would talk.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Has he gone, Bill?" said Miss Burge, entering the drawing-room about
eight o'clock that evening, and finding her brother standing before a
glass and sprinkling himself with scent.

"Yes, he went a good hour ago." And the speaker looked very solemn, and
uttered a deep sigh.

"I wouldn't disturb you, dear, at church time, as you had company; but,
Bill dear--oh, how nice you smell!" and she rested her hands on his
shoulders and reached up to kiss him.

"Do I, Betsey?"

"Lovely, dear; but do tell me what he said about Miss Thorne."

Her brother's forehead seemed to have gone suddenly into the corrugated
iron business, as he turned his eyes upon his sister.

"He said--he said--"

"Yes, dear; please go on."

"He said he had been engaged to her for two or three years, and that as
soon as his father left off cutting up rough--"

"Cutting up rough, Bill? Did he say cutting up rough?"

"Yes, Betsey. I never cut up rough in my business, never. I always
made a point of having the best Sheffield knives and steels, and my
steaks and chops and joints was always pictures."

"Yes, dear; but tell me: Miss Thorne is engaged to be married to this
gentleman?"

"I suppose so," said Mr William Forth Burge drearily. "It was always
so, Betsey. I could get on in trade, and I could save money, and I
always dressed well, and I defy the world to say I wasn't always clean
shaved; but I never did see a young lady that I thought was nice, but
somebody else had seen her before and thought the same."

"Oh, but we never know what might happen, Bill."

"What's the good of being rich? What's the good of having a fine house?
What's the good of everything, if everything's always going to turn out
disappointment? Betsey," he continued fiercely, "that chap thinks of
nothing but hisself. He's one of your cigar-smoking, glass-o'-sherry
chaps, and he ain't got a good 'art. Why, if you'd got a young man,
Betsey, and he come and sit down here and talked about you as that chap
did about our young s