skimming, sleep through the churning, and make believe I helped her. Ah,
that was a happy time enough!'

'No, never--not happy.'

'Yes, it was.'

'I don't see how happiness could be where the drudgery of dairy-work
had to be done for a living--the hands red and chapped, and the shoes
clogged....Stephen, I do own that it seems odd to regard you in the
light of--of--having been so rough in your youth, and done menial things
of that kind.' (Stephen withdrew an inch or two from her side.) 'But
I DO LOVE YOU just the same,' she continued, getting closer under his
shoulder again, 'and I don't care anything about the past; and I see
that you are all the worthier for having pushed on in the world in such
a way.'

'It is not my worthiness; it is Knight's, who pushed me.'

'Ah, always he--always he!'

'Yes, and properly so. Now, Elfride, you see the reason of his teaching
me by letter. I knew him years before he went to Oxford, but I had not
got far enough in my reading for him to entertain the idea of helping
me in classics till he left home. Then I was sent away from the village,
and we very seldom met; but he kept up this system of tuition by
correspondence with the greatest regularity. I will tell you all the
story, but not now. There is nothing more to say now, beyond giving
places, persons, and dates.' His voice became timidly slow at this
point.

'No; don't take trouble to say more. You are a dear honest fellow to say
so much as you have; and it is not so dreadful either. It has become a
normal thing that millionaires commence by going up to London with their
tools at their back, and half-a-crown in their pockets. That sort of
origin is getting so respected,' she continued cheerfully, 'that it is
acquiring some of the odour of Norman ancestry.'

'Ah, if I had MADE my fortune, I shouldn't mind. But I am only a
possible maker of it as yet.'

'It is quite enough. And so THIS is what your trouble was?'

'I thought I was doing wrong in letting you love me without telling you
my story; and yet I feared to do so, Elfie. I dreaded to lose you, and I
was cowardly on that account.'

'How plain everything about you seems after this explanation! Your
peculiarities in chess-playing, the pronunciation papa noticed in your
Latin, your odd mixture of book-knowledge with ignorance of ordinary
social accomplishments, are accounted for in a moment. And has this
anything to do with what I saw at Lord Luxellian's?'

'What did y