least to _me_. We are
kept sadly apart, Kate. If you can bear it, I can't. I should like to
be near you always--always to watch over you and worship you. Confound
that pony! he's off again."

Sure enough, Tiny was indulging in more vagaries, as if he meditated a
second fit of rebellion; and what with holding him and humouring
Mouse, and keeping my head down so as to hide my face from Frank, for
I didn't want him to see how I was blushing, I am sure I had enough to
do.

"Kate, you must really have pity on me," pursued Frank. "You don't
know how miserable I am sometimes (I wonder what he wanted me to
say?), or how happy you have it in your power to make me. Here we are
at that cursed station, and my dream is over. I must be the cripple
and the beggar once more--a beggar I am indeed, Kate, without your
affection. When shall we meet again, and where?"

"In London," was all I could answer.

"And you won't forget me, Kate?" pleaded poor Frank, looking so
handsome, poor fellow.

"_Never_," I replied, and before I knew how it was, I found myself
standing on the platform with Aunt Deborah and the servants and the
luggage. The great green engine was panting and gasping in front of
me, but ponies and pony-carriage and cripple had all vanished like a
dream.

As we steamed on to London I sometimes thought it _was_ a dream, not
altogether a pleasant one, nor yet exactly the reverse. I should have
liked my admirer to have been a little more explicit. It is all very
well to talk of being miserable and desperate, and to ring the changes
of meeting and parting, and looks and sighs, and all that; but after
all the real question is, "Will you?" or "Won't you?" and I don't
think a man is acting very fairly towards a girl who don't put the
case in that way at once before he allows himself to run into
rhapsodies about his feelings and his sufferings and such matters,
which, after all, lead to nothing, or at least to nothing
satisfactory. To be sure, men are strange creatures, and upon my word
I sometimes think they are more troubled with shyness than our own
sex. Perhaps it's their diffidence that makes them hesitate so, and,
as it were, "beat about the bush," when they have only got to "flush
the bird" and shoot it at once and put it in the game-bag. Perhaps
it's their pride for fear of being refused. Now, I think it's far more
creditable to a man to wear the willow, and take to _men dinners_ and
brandy-and-water for a month or six