What awful threats would have followed will never now be certainly known, for I interrupt.

“I will tell you!  I mean to tell you!” I cry, excitedly covering my face with my hands, and turning my back to them all; “only do not look at me! look the other way, or I cannot tell you.”

A little pause.

“You have only three minutes, Nancy.”

“Will you promise” cry I, with indistinct emphasis from under my hands, “none of you to laugh—­none, even Bobby!”

“Yes!”—­“Yes!”—­“Yes!”

“Will you swear?”

“What is the use of swearing?—­you have only half a minute now.  Well, I dare say it is nothing very funny.  Yes, we will swear!”

“Well, then, Sir Roger—­I hear Bobby laughing!”

“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.