e, May.'

'But why is it the simple truth?' she asked.

'Because----' said Paul fiercely, and then stopped dead.

'Oh, that's no answer,' she said, with a little sway of her hips. She
kept her eye upon him, but turned her head slightly aside. She might
have practised glance and posture all her life and made them no more
telling. But Paul's teeth were beginning to chatter, and she was
alarmed. 'Don't stop to tell me now,' she said, and seeing that he was
about to protest, she added swiftly: 'Come and tell me to-night, Paul,
won't ee, now? And run home now, Paul, do, there's a dear. Run, and then
you won't catch cold--to please me, Paul.'

So Paul ran, and ran himself into a glow, and felt as if the fire of
comfort in his heart would have warmed the Polar regions. Until time and
experience taught him better, he always wanted a big word for even the
least of themes.

'Man,' said old Armstrong once (but that was years later), 'ye'd borrow
the lungs of Gargantua to sing the epic of a house-fly.'

'Yes, dad,' said Paul; 'that's a capital imitation of my style,' and
they both chuckled affectionately.

But now his mind was a mere firework of interjections--squibs, bombs,
and rockets of 'Oh!' and 'Ah!' and 'Now!' and 'She'll listen! and
'She'll despise me!' He was within a month of sixteen, and he was in
receipt of sixpence a week as pocket-money, but the second fact was to
be no more durable than the first. He could neither stay at sixteen nor
at the sixpence. Time would take care of the one event, and Paul of the
other. An immediate marriage, perhaps even an early marriage, was out of
question. It might be necessary to wait for years. There was a fortune
to be made, of course, and though it might come by some rare chance
to-morrow, it might, on the other hand, take time.

'We've got to be practical,' said Paul.

Whether Paul were a greater ass than most imaginative boys of his years
may be a question, but he was as serious about this matter as if he had
been eight-and-twenty, and when he reached home he had been rejected and
had died of it, and accepted and married many times over. He got into
his working clothes after a thorough rub down, and, except for a touch
of languor, was none the worse for his morning's adventure. Armstrong
was out on business for the day, and in the drowsy afternoon Paul laid
an old press blanket on the office floor, took a ream of printing-paper
for a pillow, and slept like a top. This made