Oh, Margaret Elizabeth, it is your own fault, for being so dear, so unworldly!  Could you, can you, cast in your lot with an unknown Candy Man?  He has no business to ask you.  He did not mean to, but only to prepare the way.  He knows he is no great catch, even from the point of view of a Little Red Chimney.  These are not the precise words of the Candy Man, but something like them....

So absorbed was Margaret Elizabeth in the thought of Mary, she was a bit slow in taking in their meaning.  She gave him one startled glance, and then looked down, as it happened, upon the shabby little book which lay on the step between them.  Absently she drew it toward her, and with fingers that trembled, opened it, as if to find her answer in its pages.  Then a smile began faintly to curl about her lips, and she read aloud from the book: 

    "What we find then to accord with love and reason, that we may
    safely pronounce right and good."

“Judged at the bar of reason I fear my case is hopeless,” protested the Candy Man, putting out his hand to close the book.

But Margaret Elizabeth clasped it to her breast.  “I see nothing unreasonable in it,” she declared stoutly.  As she spoke a faded crimson flower fell in her lap.

Somewhat later in the afternoon, Miss Bentley and the Candy Man, walking together along the river path, had they not been so engrossed in their own affairs, might have recognised the tall, stooping figure of the Miser strolling slowly ahead of them.  It was for a minute only, for near a turn in the path he bent forward and disappeared in a thicket of althea bushes.  At this season it was not a dense thicket, and Mr. Knight, poking in the soft mould with his cane in search of a certain tiny plant, had no thought of hiding, but, as it chanced, was unobserved by his friends.

“Oh, Margaret Elizabeth,” her companion was saying as they passed, “you are so dear!  I have no business to be telling you so, but indeed I can’t help it.”

And she with a little laugh replied:  “I am glad you can’t, Candy Man.”  And the next moment they were gone around the turn.

That was all, but it was enough.  What rarer flower was likely to come the Miser’s way, on this or any day?

He stood and looked after them.  These two had brought into his grey life the touch of golden youth.  He began to tremble under the force of a wonderful thought.  He sought a bench and sank upon it.  It would be a solution of his problem.  He had come out to-day into the spring sunshine, feeling his burden more than he could bear, for in his pocket was a letter which put an end to the hope he had long cherished of at length righting a great wrong.

There must be a way of doing what he wished.  The consent of the Candy Man once gained, that hateful fortune, which through these years had been slowly crushing him, might become a minister of joy and well being, might make possible for others those best things of life that he had missed.