“Yessir.”

“Here, take my handkerchief.”

“Yessir ... but I won’t marry anybody else.”

“You make me smile, Mary Ann.  When you brought your mother that cake for Sally you didn’t know a time would come when—­”

“Oh, please, sir, I know that.  But you said yesterday I was a young woman now.  And this is all different to that.”

“No, it isn’t, Mary Ann.  When they’ve put you to school, and made you a Ward in Chancery, or something, and taught you airs, and graces, and dressed you up”—­a pang traversed his heart, as the picture of her in the future flashed for a moment upon his inner eye—­“why, by that time, you’ll be a different Mary Ann, outside and inside.  Don’t shake your head; I know better than you.  We grow and become different.  Life is full of chances, and human beings are full of changes, and nothing remains fixed.”

“Then, perhaps”—­she flushed up, her eyes sparkled—­“perhaps”—­she grew dumb and sad again.

“Perhaps what?”

He waited for her thought.  The rapturous trills of the canary alone possessed the silence.

“Perhaps you’ll change, too.”  She flashed a quick deprecatory glance at him—­her eyes were full of soft light.

This time he was dumb.

“Sw—­eet!” trilled the canary, “sw—­eet!” though Lancelot felt the throbbings of his heart must be drowning its song.

“Acutely answered,” he said at last.  “You’re not such a fool after all, Mary Ann.  But I’m afraid it will never be, dear.  Perhaps if I also made two million dollars, and if I felt I had grown worthy of you, I might come to you and say—­two and two are four—­let us go into partnership.  But then, you see,” he went on briskly, “the odds are I may never even have two thousand.  Perhaps I’m as much a duffer in music as in other things.  Perhaps you’ll be the only person in the world who has ever heard my music, for no one will print it, Mary Ann.  Perhaps I shall be that very common thing—­a complete failure—­and be worse off than even you ever were, Mary Ann.”

“Oh, Mr. Lancelot, I’m so sorry.”  And her eyes filled again with tears.

“Oh, don’t be sorry for me.  I’m a man.  I dare say I shall pull through.  Just put me out of your mind, dear.  Let all that happened at Baker’s Terrace be only a bad dream—­a very bad dream, I am afraid I must call it.  Forget me, Mary Ann.  Everything will help you to forget me, thank Heaven, it’ll be the best thing for you.  Promise me now.”

“Yessir ... if you will promise me.”

“Promise you what?”

“To do me a favour.”

“Certainly, dear, if I can.”

“You have the money, Mr. Lancelot, instead of me—­I don’t want it, and then you could—­”

“Now, now, Mary Ann,” he interrupted, laughing nervously, “you’re getting foolish again, after talking so sensibly.”

“Oh, but why not?” she said plaintively.

“It is impossible,” he said curtly.