[Illustration:  “GAVE HER A COCOANUT.”]

Six months after the case was ended, she broke off the match.  She said that, on reflection, she could not help seeing what an advantage he would have over her—­he being in a solicitor’s office, with the law at his fingers’ ends—­should she ever find it necessary to summons him.

“But, my good girl,” said Ethelbertha, quite distressed, “one doesn’t marry a man with the idea of subsequently summonsing him!”

“No, mum,” said Amenda, “one always hopes one will never need to, I’m sure, but it’s just as well to be prepared.  I knew a girl, when I was in service at Hastings, that loved a printer, and they were both going to commit suicide because her parents didn’t want ’em to marry; and now he costs her four shillings a month regular in summonses.  It’s no good shutting one’s eyes to things, mum.”

But the most shamefully mercenary engagement that I think Amenda ever entered into was one with a ’bus conductor.  We were living in the North of London then, and she had a young man, a cheesemonger, who kept a shop in Lupus Street, Chelsea.  He could not come up to her because of the shop, so once a week she used to go down to him.  One did not ride ten miles for a penny in those days, and she found the fare from Holloway to Victoria and back a severe tax upon her purse.  The same ’bus that took her down at six brought her back at ten.  During the first journey the ’bus conductor stared at Amenda; during the second he talked to her, during the third he gave her a cocoanut, during the fourth he proposed to her, and was promptly accepted.  After that, Amenda was enabled to visit her cheesemonger without expense.

[Illustration:  “‘I DESIRE SHARING CROSS.’”]

He was a quaint character himself, was this ’bus conductor.  I often rode with him to Fleet Street.  He knew me quite well (I suppose Amenda must have pointed me out to him), and would always ask me after her—­aloud, before all the other passengers, which was trying—­and give me messages to take back to her.  Where women were concerned he had what is called “a way” with him, and from the extent and variety of his female acquaintance, and the evident tenderness with which the majority of them regarded him, I am inclined to hope that Amenda’s desertion of him (which happened contemporaneously with her jilting of the cheesemonger) caused him less prolonged suffering than might otherwise have been the case.

He was a man from whom I derived a good deal of amusement one way and another.  Thinking of him brings back to my mind a somewhat odd incident.

One afternoon, I jumped upon his ’bus in the Seven Sisters Road.  An elderly Frenchman was the only other occupant of the vehicle.  “You vil not forget me,” the Frenchman was saying as I entered, “I desire Sharing Cross.”

“I won’t forget yer,” answered the conductor, “you shall ’ave yer Sharing Cross.  Don’t make a fuss about it.”