fully
argumentative and quarrelsome person.'

'I'll never quarrel with you, Lucy,' he said half entreatingly; for
somehow he felt a shiver of cold at the word 'baptized,' as though
himself plunged into the font.

In this wise did both glide away from any deep issue or decision till
the summer itself glided away. Mrs. Cohn, anxiously following the
courtship through Sim's love-smitten eyes, her suggestion that the
girl be brought to see her received with equal postponement, began to
fret for the great thing to come to pass. One cannot be always
heroically stiffened to receive the cavalry of communal criticism.
Waiting weakens the backbone. But she concealed from her boy these
flaccid relapses.

'You said you'd bring her to see me when she returned from the
seaside,' she ventured to remind him.

'So I did; but now her father is dragging her away to Scotland.'

'You ought to get married the moment she gets back.'

'I can't expect her to rush things--with her father to square. Still,
you are not wrong, mother. It's high time we came to a definite
understanding between ourselves at least.'

'What!' gasped Mrs. Cohn. 'Aren't you engaged?'

'Oh, in a way, of course. But we've never said so in so many words.'

For fear this should be the 'English' way, Mrs. Cohn forbore to remark
that the definiteness of the Sugarman method was not without
compensations. She merely applauded Simon's more sensible mood.

But Mrs. Cohn was fated to a further season of fret. Day after day the
'fat letters' arrived with the Scottish postmark and the faint perfume
that always stirred her own wistful sense of lost romance--something
far-off and delicious, with the sweetness of roses and the salt of
tears. And still the lover, floating in his golden mist, vouchsafed
her no definite news.

One night she found him restive beyond his wont. She knew the reason.
For two days there had been no scented letter, and she saw how he
started at every creak of the garden-gate, as he waited for the last
post. When at length a step was heard crunching on the gravel, he
rushed from the room, and Mrs. Cohn heard the hall-door open. Her ear,
disappointed of the rat-tat, morbidly followed every sound; but it
seemed a long time before her boy's returning footstep reached her.
The strange, slow drag of it worked upon her nerves, and her heart
grew sick with premonition.

He held out the letter towards her. His face was white. 'She cannot
marry me, because I