“Oh, it is you!” said Afy, freezingly, when compelled to acknowledge him, but his offered hand she utterly repudiated.  “Really, Mr. Jiffin, I should feel obliged if you would not come out to me in this offensive and public manner.”

Mr. Jiffin grew cold.  “Offensive!  Not come out?” gasped he.  “I do trust I have not been so unfortunate as to offend you, Miss Afy!”

“Well—­you see,” said Afy, calling up all her impudence to say what she had made up her mind to say, “I have been considering it well over, Jiffin, and I find that to carry out the marriage will not be for my—­for our happiness.  I intended to write to inform you of this; but I shall be spared the trouble—­as you have come out to me.”

The perspiration, cold as ice, began to pour off Mr. Jiffin in his agony and horror.  You might have wrung every thread he had on.  “You—­don’t mean—­to—­imply—­that—­you—­give—­me—­up—­Miss—­Afy?” he jerked out, unevenly.

“Well, yes, I do,” replied Afy.  “It’s as good to be plain, and then there can be no misapprehension.  I’ll shake hands now with you, Jiffin, for the last time; and I am very sorry that we both made such a mistake.”

Poor Jiffin looked at her.  His gaze would have melted a heart of stone.  “Miss Afy, you can’t mean it!  You’d never, sure, crush a fellow in this manner, whose whole soul is yours; who trusted you entirely?  There’s not an earthly thing I would not do to please you.  You have been the light of my existence.”

“Of course,” returned Afy, with a lofty and indifferent air, as if to be “the light of his existence” was only her due.  “But it’s all done and over.  It is not at all a settlement that will suit me, you see, Jiffin.  A butter and bacon factor is so very—­so very—­what I have not been accustomed to!  And then, those aprons!  I never could get reconciled to them.”

“I’ll discard the aprons altogether,” cried he, in a fever.  “I’ll get a second shopman, and buy a little gig, and do nothing but drive you out.  I’ll do anything if you will but have me still, Miss Afy.  I have bought the ring, you know.”

“Your intentions are very kind,” was the distant answer, “but it’s a thing impossible; my mind is fully made up.  So farewell for good, Jiffin; and I wish you better luck in your next venture.”

Afy, lifting her capacious dress, for the streets had just been watered, minced off.  And Mr. Joe Jiffin, wiping his wet face as he gazed after her, instantly wished that he could be nailed up in one of his pickled pork barrels, and so be out of his misery.

“That’s done with, thank goodness,” soliloquized Afy.  “Have him, indeed.  After what Richard let out on the trial.  As if I should look after anybody less than Dick Hare!  I shall get him, too.  I always knew Dick Hare loved me above everything on earth; and he does still, or he’d never had said what he did in open court.  ’It’s better to be born lucky than rich.’