, ready, and
respectful hands.

"When we are parted for good, I shall miss you," he said, simply.

Her tender heart throbbed with gratitude, but she only answered, "Are we
to be parted for good? Will you never come back to Redwater?"

"I cannot come back like Sam," he affirmed, sadly, not bitterly; "I am
not a rising man, Dulcie, though I may paint for future ages."

A bright thought struck Dulcie, softening and warming her girlish
face, till it was like one of those faces which look out of Fra
Angelico's pictures, and express what we are fond of talking
about--adoration and beneficence: "Could I paint for the potteries,
Master Locke?" For, in his noble thriftless way, he had initiated her
into some of the very secrets of his tinting, and Dulcie was made bold
by the feats she had achieved.

"What should set you labouring on paltry porringers?--you are provided
with your bit and sup, Mistress Dulcie."

"I thought it might be fine to help a great painter like you," confessed
the gentle lass; very gently, with reluctance and pain, for it was wrung
by compulsion from her maidenliness.

"Do you think so? I love you for thinking it," he said directly: but he
would never have done so, brave as he was in his fantasies, without her
drawing him on.

However, after that speech, there was no further talk of their parting
for good: indeed, Dulcie would do her part; and slave at these "mugs and
pigs" to any extent; and all for a look of his painting before he
quitted the easel of nights; a walk, hanging upon his arm, up Primrose
Hill; a seat by his side on the Sundays in the city church where he
worshipped. Dulcie did not care to trouble her friends at home with the
matter: instead, she had a proud vision of surprising them with the
sight of--her husband. "They would be for waiting till they could spare
money to buy more clothes, or perhaps a chest of drawers; they could not
afford it; no more could Will find means to fly up and down the country.
Father dear will be pleased to see him so temperate: he cannot drink
more than a glass of orange-wine, or a sip of cherry-brandy; he says it
makes his head ache: he prefers the clear, cold water, or at most a dish
of chocolate. Mother may jeer at him as unmanly; she has a fine spirit,
mother: and she may think I might have done better; but mother has grown
a little mercenary, and forgotten that she was once young herself, and
would have liked to have served a great genius with such