ryly; "I greatly
mistake if she would regard it as a laughing matter at all."

"No, lasses are strange things," Jack meditated again. "But, Harry, you
are as old as I am, and are earning the same wage; why don't you marry
her?"

"I would," Harry said earnestly, "to-morrow if she'd have me."

"You would!" Jack exclaimed, as much astonished as by his friend's first
proposition. "To think of that now! Why, you have always been with her
just as I have. You have never shown that you cared for her, never
given her presents, nor walked with her, nor anything. And do you really
care for her, Harry?"

"Aye," Harry said shortly, "I have cared for her for years."

"And to think that I have never seen that!" Jack said. "Why didn't you
tell me? Why, you are as difficult to understand as she is, and I
thought I knew you so well!"

"What would have been the use?" Harry said. "Nelly likes me as a friend,
that's all."

"That's it," Jack said. "Of course when people are friends they don't
think of each other in any other way. Still, Harry, she may get to in
time. Nelly's pretty well a woman, she's seventeen now, but she has no
one else after her that I know of."

"Well, Jack, I fancy she could have plenty after her, for she's the
prettiest and best girl o' the place; but you see, you are always about
wi' her, and I think that most people think it will be a match some
day."

"People are fools," Jack burst out wrathfully. "Who says so? just tell
me who says so?"

"People say so, Jack. When a young chap and a lass walk together people
suppose there is something in it, and you and Nelly ha' been walking
together for the last five years."

"Walking together!" Jack repeated angrily; "we have been going about
together of course, and you have generally been with us, and often
enough half-a-dozen others; that is not like walking together. Nelly
knew, and every one knew, that we agreed to be friends from the day we
stood on the edge of the old shaft when you were in the water below, and
we have never changed since."

"I know you have never changed, Jack, never thought of Nelly but as a
true friend. I did not know whether now you might think differently. I
wanted to hear from your own lips. Now I know you don't, that you have
no thought of ever being more than a true friend to her, I shall try if
I cannot win her."

"Do," Jack said, shaking his friend's hand. "I am sure I wish you
success. Nothing in the world would please me so m