And meantime Cicely took tea along with Samuel’s mother and his old aunt, who lived with them, and told her father they were dear old people and a very nice and interesting pair indeed; because if you’re in love, the belongings of the charmer always seem quite all right at first and worthy of all praise.

In fact, Sam and Cicely lived for each other, as the saying is, afore six weeks were spent, and on Christmas Day, being off duty at the time, the policeman took an afternoon walk with Cicely Green and asked her to marry him.

“You know me,” he said, “and very like a common constable lies far beneath your views, as well he may; but there it is:  I love you, to the soles of my feet, and if, by a miracle of wonder, you was to think I could win you, I’d slave to do so for evermore, my dinky dear.”

“’Tis no odds you’re a policeman,” she said.  “You’ve got to be something.  And you very well know I love you, and life’s properly empty when you ain’t with me.  There’s nought else in the world that matters to me but only you.”

With that the man swallowed her in his great arms and took his first kiss off her.  In fact, the world went very well for ’em, till they stood afore Chawner, who demanded time.  Indeed, he appeared to be a good bit vexed about it.

“Dash my wig!” he said, “who be you, you hulking bobby, to come upsetting my family arrangements and knocking my well-laid plans on the head in this fashion?  Sis came here to look after me, didn’t she, not to look after you.  And ’tis all moonshine in my opinion, and I doubt if you know your own minds, for that’s a thing this generation of youth never is known to do.  And, be it as it will, time must pass—­oceans of time—­afore I can figure all this out and say whether ’tis to be, or whether it ain’t.”

They expected something like that, and Cicely had a plan.

“If Sam was to come and live along with you, father,” she said, “then I shouldn’t leave you at all and we would go on nice and comfortable together.”

“For you, yes,” said Chawner, winking his eye.  “But what about me?  I don’t intend to neighbour so close as all that with a policeman, I do assure you, my fine dear.  And so us’ll watch and wait, and see if Samuel Borlase have got that fine quality of patience so needful to his calling—­also what sort of hold he can show me on the savings bank, and so on.”

Then he turned to the young man.

“I know nought against you, Samuel,” he said, “but I know nothing for you neither.  So it will be a very clever action if we just go on as we’re going and see what life looks like a good year hence.”

More than that Chawner wouldn’t say; but he recognised they should walk out together and unfold their feelings, and he promised that in a year’s time he’d decide whether Samuel was up to the mark for his girl.

He was a good bit of a puzzle to Borlase, but the younger, in justice, couldn’t quarrel with the verdict, and he only hoped that Cicely wouldn’t change her mind in such a parlous long time; for a year to the eye of love be a century.