You are not going to make a burnt-offering of yourself on the
Bilberry shrine again, are you?"

But Dolly only laughed the more as she took the merino from him.

"If you want a breadth of merino to hold, take another one," she
said. "I want that. And as to being a burnt-offering on the shrine of
Bilberry, my dear Griffith, you must know it is policy," and immediately
went on with her unpicking again, while Griffith, bending over in an
attitude more remarkable for ease than grace, looked on at her sharp
little glancing scissors with an appearance of great interest.

It would perhaps be as well to pause here to account for this young
man's evident freedom in the family circle. It was very plain that he
was accustomed to coming and going when he pleased, and it was easy to
be adduced from his manner that, to him, Dolly was the chief attraction
in the establishment. The fact was, he was engaged to Dolly, and had
been engaged to her for years, and in all probability, unless his
prospects altered their aspect, would be engaged to her for years to
come. In past time, when both were absurdly young, and ought to have
been at school, the two had met,--an impressionable, good-natured,
well-disposed couple of children, who fell in love with each other
unreasoningly and honestly, giving no thought to the future. They
were too young to be married, of course, and indeed had not troubled
themselves about anything so matter of fact; they had fallen in love,
and enjoyed it, and, strange to say, had been enjoying it ever since,
and falling in love more deeply every day of their affectionate,
inconsequent, free-and-easy lives. What did it matter to them that
neither owned a solitary sixpence, for which they had not a thousand
uses? What did it matter to Dolly that Griffith's literary career had so
far been so unremunerative that a new suit is as an event, and an extra
shilling an era? What did it matter to Griffith that Dolly's dresses
were re-trimmed and re-turned and re-furbished, until their reappearance
with the various seasons was the opening of a High Carnival of jokes?
Love is not a matter of bread and butter in Vaga-bondia, thank Heaven!
Love is left to Bohemia as well as to barren Respectability, and, as
Griffith frequently observed with no slight enthusiasm, "When it comes
to figure, where's the feminine Philistine whose silks and satins and
purple and fine raiment fit like Dolly's do?" So it went on, and the
two adored each ot