d Neil replied:

"Grey is an American, and that makes a difference; every body works
there, and it does not matter."

"Then let us go to America and be Americans, too," Bessie said, but Neil
only shook his head, and replied:

"I could never live in that half-civilized land of equality, where the
future President may be buttoned up in the jacket of my bootblack. I am
an out-and-out aristocrat and would rather be poor and be jostled by
nobility than be rich and brush against Tom, Dick and Harry and have to
bow to their wives."

Bessie gave a little sigh, for this was not at all like Grey Jerrold,
whom Neil was going to imitate; but before she could speak, he
continued:

"We shall pull through somehow in London, and in time mother will come
round when she finds I am determined. So, Bessie, it is settled, and you
promise to be my wife when I can fix things?"

He was taking his consent too much for granted, and Bessie did not like
it, and said to him:

"No, Neil; it is not settled for sure. I can never be yours without your
mother's sanction. Think what you would be taking upon
yourself--poverty, father and me!"

"The _me_ would not be so very bad," Neil said, drawing her closely to
him, and caressing her hair as he talked, advancing argument after
argument why she should consent to a secret engagement, the greatest
argument of all being the influence such an engagement would have over
him, helping him in his new resolution to be a man after the Grey
Jerrold order; for Grey's name was mentioned often in the strange
plighting of vows, and when at last Bessie's consent was won to be
Neil's wife as soon as his mother was reconciled, her mind was almost as
full of Grey as it was of Neil, who, now that she was his, became the
most tender and devoted lover during his remaining stay at Stoneleigh,
and Bessie was happier than she had ever been in her life, though there
was one drawback upon her happiness: she would like to have told her
father, but Neil had said she must not, and she obeyed, wondering to
herself if Grey would have bound her to secrecy.

Grey was a good deal mixed up in Bessie's thoughts after Neil was gone,
and she often found herself thinking:

"More than twenty thousand happier because of him! Could any life be
nobler than that, and why should not I imitate it?"

And then Bessie began the experiment of trying to make somebody happy
every day; and the butcher's boy of whom she bought the meat, and the