dyce, in breathless interest.

'Faith, I can't remember exactly,' George replied, and his mother was
more than astonished to see his cheek flushing. 'I know she asked me to
wait, and not to bother her. I believe she'll have me in the end.
Anyhow, I mean to have her, and it's the same thing, isn't it?'

'I hope it may be; but if you take my advice, my dear, don't leave her
alone too much, in case somebody else more enterprising and not so
easily repulsed should step in before you. If I were a man I wouldn't
walk off for a girl's first No.'

'You don't know a blessed thing about what you're talking of, mother,'
replied George, with calm candour. 'If you were a man, and had a girl
looking at you with a steady stare, and telling you to get out, well, I
guess you'd get out pretty quick, that's all.'

Mrs. Fordyce laughed.

'Well, perhaps so; but it is very important that you should follow up
your advantage, however slight it may be. It would be a most desirable
alliance. Think of her family; it would be a splendid connection. You
would be a county gentleman, to begin with.'

'And call myself Fordyce Graham? Eh, mother?' said George lazily. 'There
are worse sounding names. But Gladys herself affects to have no pride in
her long descent; that very day she was quoting to me that rot of Burns
about rank being only the guinea stamp, and all that sort of thing. All
very well for a fellow like Burns, who was only a ploughman. It has done
Gladys a lot of harm living in the slums; it won't be easy eradicating
her queer notions, I can tell you.'

'Oh, after she is married, if you take her well in hand, it will be easy
enough,' said his mother confidently. 'She did not give you a positive
refusal, then?'

'No; but I'm not going to make myself too cheap,' said George; 'it
seldom pays in any circumstances--in dealings with women, never. They
set all the more store by a fellow who thinks a good deal of himself.'

'Then you should be very successful,' said Mrs. Fordyce, with a smile.
'Well, remember that nothing will give your father and me greater
pleasure than to hear that you are engaged to Gladys Graham.'

'Well, I'd better get out of this. Twenty minutes to eleven! By Jove,
wonder what the governor would say if he were to pop in just now?
Thunder's not in it.'

So the amiable and self-satisfied George took himself off to the mill,
and all day long thought much of his mother's advice, and somehow he
felt himself being impe