the next six months; then we can get our cottage and live on
love, my dearest."

"Plus three hundred a year," said the girl sensibly then she added, "Oh,
poor Frank Random!"

"Lucy," cried her lover indignantly.

"Well, I was only pitying him. He's a nice man, and you can't expect him
to be pleased at our marriage."

"Perhaps," said Hope in an icy tone, "you would like him to be the
bridegroom. If so, there is still time."

"Silly boy!" She took his arm. "As I have been bought, you know that I
can't run away from my purchaser."

"You denied being bought just now. It seems to me, Lucy, that I am to
marry a weather-cock."

"That is only an impolite name for a woman, dear. You have no sense of
humor, Frank, or you would call me an April lady."

"Because you change every five minutes. H'm! It's puzzling."

"Is it? Perhaps you would like me to resemble Widow Anne, who is always
funereal. Here she is, looking like Niobe."

They were strolling through Gartley village by this time, and the
cottagers came to their doors and front gates to look at the handsome
young couple. Everyone knew of the engagement, and approved of the same,
although some hinted that Lucy Kendal would have been wiser to marry
the soldier-baronet. Amongst these was Widow Anne, who really was Mrs.
Bolton, the mother of Sidney, a dismal female invariably arrayed in
rusty, stuffy, aggressive mourning, although her husband had been dead
for over twenty years. Because of this same mourning, and because she
was always talking of the dead, she was called "Widow Anne," and looked
on the appellation as a compliment to her fidelity. At the present
moment she stood at the gate of her tiny garden, mopping her red eyes
with a dingy handkerchief.

"Ah, young love, young love, my lady," she groaned, when the couple
passed, for she always gave Lucy a title as though she really and truly
had become the wife of Sir Frank, "but who knows how long it may last?"

"As long as we do," retorted Lucy, annoyed by this prophetic speech.

Widow Anne groaned with relish. "So me and Aaron, as is dead and gone,
thought, my lady. But in six months he was knocking the head off me."

"The man who would lay his hand on a woman save in the way of--"

"Oh, Archie, what nonsense, you talk!" cried Miss Kendal pettishly.

"Ah!" sighed the woman of experience, "I called it nonsense too, my
lady, afore Aaron, who now lies with the worms, laid me out with a
flat-iron. Men's fit fo