’I am sure you are most liberal, Mr. Gibson.  Three helpings!  And, I daresay, butcher’s meat in proportion?’

’Oh!  I only named it because, with such very young men, it’s generally see-saw between appetite and love, and I thought the third helping a very good sign.  But still, you know, what has happened once, may happen again.’

‘I don’t know.  Phoebe had an offer of marriage once—­’ said Miss Browning.

‘Hush! sister.  It might hurt his feelings to have it spoken about.’

’Nonsense, child!  It’s five-and-twenty years ago; and his eldest daughter is married herself.’

‘I own he has not been constant,’ pleaded Miss Phoebe, in her tender, piping voice.  ’All men are not—­like you, Mr Gibson—­faithful to the memory of their first love.’

Mr. Gibson winced.  Jeanie was his first love; but her name had never been breathed in Hollingford.  His wife—­good, pretty, sensible, and beloved as she had been—­was not his second; no, nor his third love.  And now he was come to make a confidence about his second marriage.

‘Well, well,’ said he; ’at any rate, I thought I must do something to protect Molly from such affairs while she was so young, and before I had given my sanction.  Miss Eyre’s little nephew fell ill of scarlet fever—­’

’Ah! by-the-by, how careless of me not to inquire.  How is the poor little fellow?’

’Worse—­better.  It doesn’t signify to what I’ve got to say now; the fact was, Miss Eyre couldn’t come back to my house for some time, and I cannot leave Molly altogether at Hamley.’

’Ah!  I see now, why there was that sudden visit to Hamley.  Upon my word, it’s quite a romance.’

‘I do like hearing of a love-affair,’ murmured Miss Phoebe.

‘Then if you’ll let me get on with my story, you shall hear of mine,’ said Mr. Gibson, quite beyond his patience with their constant interruptions.

‘Yours!’ said Miss Phoebe, faintly.

‘Bless us and save us!’ said Miss Browning, with less sentiment in her tone; ‘what next?’

‘My marriage, I hope,’ said Mr. Gibson, choosing to take her expression of intense surprise literally.  ’And that’s what I came to speak to you about.’

A little hope darted up in Miss Phoebe’s breast.  She had often said to her sister, in the confidence of curling-time (ladies wore curls in those days), ’that the only man who could ever bring her to think of matrimony was Mr. Gibson; but that if he ever proposed, she should feel bound to accept him, for poor dear Mary’s sake;’ never explaining what exact style of satisfaction she imagined she should give to her dead friend by marrying her late husband.  Phoebe played nervously with the strings of her black silk apron.  Like the Caliph in the Eastern story, a whole lifetime of possibilities passed through her mind in an instant, of which possibilities the question of questions was, Could she leave her sister?  Attend, Phoebe, to the present moment, and listen to what is being said before you distress yourself with a perplexity which will never arise.