It did not greatly matter, of course.  Totty could not be expected to nurture an affection for her crusty uncle with his shop in Tottenham Court Road; in fact, he had behaved badly to her branch of the family, and such behaviour cannot always be made up for.  As to the offer, she had declined it in perfect good faith.  Yes, she preferred her liberty, her innocent nights at the Canterbury Music Hall, her scampering about the streets at all hours, her marmalade and pickles eaten off a table covered with a newspaper in company with half a dozen friends as harum-scarum as herself.  Deliberately, she preferred these joys to anything she could imagine as entering into the life of a ‘lady.’

However, it was a fact that Christmas was very near, also a fact that she stood pledged to marry Luke Ackroyd any day after Christmas that he chose to claim her.  She was a little sorry that she could not inform her uncle in Tottenham Court Road of the change she was about to make in her life; there was no knowing how he might have behaved on such an occasion.  Luke had been saving a little money of late, but it was naturally a very little; he, foolish fellow, had a way of buying her things which she did not in the least want, but which she could not refuse since it gave him such enormous pleasure to offer them.  Luke was very generous, whatever his faults might be.  Certain presents of his she had returned to him, in wrath, probably once a fortnight, and when, in the course of things, she had to take them back again, some object was always added.  The presents cost little, it is true; Totty did not ask the price of them, but liked the kindness which suggested their purchase.  She liked many things about Luke Ackroyd; whether she really liked him himself, liked him in ’the proper way’—­well, that was a question she asked herself often enough without any very definite answer.

No matter, she had promised to marry him, and she was not the girl to break her word.  Now, if her uncle had still been in communication with her, was it not a very likely thing that he would have felt a desire to—­in fact, to do something for them?  It was not nice to begin married life in furnished lodgings, especially if prudence dictated the living in a single room, as such numbers of her acquaintances did.  Totty had discovered that couples who wedded and went to live in one furnished room seldom got along well together.  It was well if the wife did not shortly go about with ugly-looking bruises on her face, or with her arm in a sling.  No, to be sure, Luke Ackroyd was not a man of that kind; it was inconceivable that he should ever be harsh to her, let alone brutal.  Still, it was not nice to begin in furnished lodgings.  And perhaps her uncle in Tottenham Court Road—­he was, in fact, a furniture dealer—­would have seen his way to garnish for them a modest couple of rooms, by way of wedding present.  But, he having drawn back from communication, Totty could not bring herself to his notice again, not she.