!"

"He is not!"--"He is not!"--"I am not!--I am only beginning to sneeze!"

"Well, then, Sir Roger--"

I come to a dead stop.

"_Sir Roger?_ What about him? There is not a smile on one of our faces:
if you do not believe, look for yourself!--What about our future
benefactor?"

"He _is_ not our future benefactor," cry I, energetically, whisking
swiftly round to face them again, and dropping my hands, "he _never_
will be!--he does not _want_ to be! He wants to--to--to MARRY ME!
there!"

The murder is out. The match is set to the gunpowder train. Now for the
explosion!

The clock-hand reaches the quarter--passes it; but in all the assembly
there is no sound. The westering sun shines in on four open mouths (the
youthful Tou Tou is absent), on four pairs of stupidly-staring eyes. The
rocking-chair has ceased rocking. Bobby's sneeze has stopped half-way.
There is a petrified silence.

At length, "_Marry you!_" says the Brat, in a deeply-accented tone of
low and awed disbelief. "Why, he was at school with father!"

"I wish to heavens that he had never been at school anywhere!" cry I, in
a fury. "I am sick to death of hearing that he was at school with
father. Will no one ever forget it?"

"He is for-ty-sev-en!" says Algy, at last closing his mouth, and
speaking with slow impressiveness. "Nineteen from forty-seven! how many
years older than you?"

"Do not count!" cry I, pettishly; "what is the use? not all the counting
in the world will make him any younger."

"It is not true!" cries Bobby, with boisterous skepticism, jumping up
from his seat, and making a plunge at me; "it is a _hoax_! she has been
taking us all in! Really, Nancy, for a beginner, you did not do it
badly!"

"It is _not_ a hoax!" cry I, scornfully, standing scarlet and deeply
ashamed, facing them all; "it is real, plain, downright, simple truth."

Another pause. No sound but the monotonous, unemotional clock, and the
woodpecker's fluty laugh from the orchard.

"And so you _really_ have a lover at last, Nancy?" says Algy, the
corners of his mouth beginning to twitch in a way which looks badly for
the keeping of his oath.

"Yes!" say I, beginning to laugh violently, but quite uncomfortably;
"are you surprised? you know I always told you that if you half shut
your eyes, and looked at me from a great way off, I really was not so
bad-looking."

"You have distanced the Begums!" cries the young fellow, joining in my
mirth, but with a good deal