gie sat quiet as a
mouse, lest the rustle of her gown should break the divine enchantment. At
last it came.

"Dear, since you loved this book, it is your own--" That was how it began.
Long afterwards Arthur would turn pale when he thought of how it went on;
for it was wonderful how bad it was, especially the lines that _had_ to
rhyme.

He did not know it when he gave her back the book.

She read it over and over again, seeing how bad it was, and not caring.
For her the beginning, middle, and end of that delicate lyric were in the
one word "Dear."

"Do you mind?" He had risen and was standing over her as she read.

"Mind?"

"What I've called you?"

She looked up suddenly. His face met hers, and before she knew it Aggie's
initiation came.

"Ah," said Arthur, rising solemn from the consecration of the primal kiss,
and drawing himself up like a man for the first time aware of his full
stature, "that makes _that_ seem pretty poor stuff, doesn't it?"

Young Arthur had just looked upon Love himself, and for that moment his
vision was purged of vanity.

"Not Browning?" asked Aggie, a little anxiously.

"No--Not Browning. Me. Browning could write poetry. I can't. I know that
now."

And she knew it, too; but that made no difference. It was not for his
poetry she loved him.

"And so," said her mother, after Arthur had stayed for tea and supper, and
said his good-bye and gone--"so that's the man you've been waiting for all
this time?"

"Yes, that's the man I've been waiting for," said Aggie.

Three days later Queningford knew that Aggie was going to marry Arthur
Gatty, and that John Hurst was going to marry Susie.

Susie was not pretty, but she had eyes like Aggie's.

III

After all, Susie was married before her eldest sister; for Aggie had to
wait till Arthur's salary rose. He thought it was going to rise at
midsummer, or if not at midsummer, then at Michaelmas. But midsummer and
Michaelmas passed, Christmas and Easter, too, and Arthur's salary showed
no sign of rising. He daren't tell Aggie that he had been obliged to leave
off reading Latin in the evenings, and was working feverishly at shorthand
in order to increase his efficiency. His efficiency increased, but not his
salary.

Meanwhile he spent all his holidays at Queningford, and Aggie had been
twice to town. They saw so little of each other that every meeting was a
divine event, a spiritual adventure. If each was not exactly an
undiscovere