“Oh, Fred, how ill you look!  Sit down a moment.  Don’t go yet.  Let me tell uncle that you are here.  He has been wondering that he has not seen you for a whole week.”  Mary spoke hurriedly, saying the words that came first without knowing very well what they were, but saying them in a half-soothing half-beseeching tone, and rising as if to go away to Mr. Featherstone.  Of course Fred felt as if the clouds had parted and a gleam had come:  he moved and stood in her way.

“Say one word, Mary, and I will do anything.  Say you will not think the worst of me—­will not give me up altogether.”

“As if it were any pleasure to me to think ill of you,” said Mary, in a mournful tone.  “As if it were not very painful to me to see you an idle frivolous creature.  How can you bear to be so contemptible, when others are working and striving, and there are so many things to be done—­how can you bear to be fit for nothing in the world that is useful?  And with so much good in your disposition, Fred,—­ you might be worth a great deal.”

“I will try to be anything you like, Mary, if you will say that you love me.”

“I should be ashamed to say that I loved a man who must always be hanging on others, and reckoning on what they would do for him.  What will you be when you are forty?  Like Mr. Bowyer, I suppose—­ just as idle, living in Mrs. Beck’s front parlor—­fat and shabby, hoping somebody will invite you to dinner—­spending your morning in learning a comic song—­oh no! learning a tune on the flute.”

Mary’s lips had begun to curl with a smile as soon as she had asked that question about Fred’s future (young souls are mobile), and before she ended, her face had its full illumination of fun.  To him it was like the cessation of an ache that Mary could laugh at him, and with a passive sort of smile he tried to reach her hand; but she slipped away quickly towards the door and said, “I shall tell uncle.  You must see him for a moment or two.”

Fred secretly felt that his future was guaranteed against the fulfilment of Mary’s sarcastic prophecies, apart from that “anything” which he was ready to do if she would define it He never dared in Mary’s presence to approach the subject of his expectations from Mr. Featherstone, and she always ignored them, as if everything depended on himself.  But if ever he actually came into the property, she must recognize the change in his position.  All this passed through his mind somewhat languidly, before he went up to see his uncle.  He stayed but a little while, excusing himself on the ground that he had a cold; and Mary did not reappear before he left the house.  But as he rode home, he began to be more conscious of being ill, than of being melancholy.