Harry gave a long whistle.

‘Leave at once,’ said Evan to Susan.  ’Whatever you may want send to me for.  And when you think you can meet your parents, I will take you to them.  Remember that is what you must do.’

’Make her give up that stupidness of hers, about being made a lady of, Mr. Harrington,’ said the inveterate Polly.

Susan here fell a-weeping.

‘I would go, sir,’ she said.  ’I ’m sure I would obey you:  but I can’t.  I can’t go back to the inn.  They ’re beginning to talk about me, because—­because I can’t—­can’t pay them, and I’m ashamed.’

Evan looked at Harry.

‘I forgot,’ the latter mumbled, but his face was crimson.  He put his hands in his pockets.  ‘Do you happen to have a note or so?’ he asked.

Evan took him aside and gave him what he had; and this amount, without inspection or reserve, Harry offered to Susan.  She dashed his hand impetuously from her sight.

‘There, give it to me,’ said Polly.  ’Oh, Mr. Harry! what a young man you are!’

Whether from the rebuff, or the reproach, or old feelings reviving, Harry was moved to go forward, and lay his hand on Susan’s shoulder and mutter something in her ear that softened her.

Polly thrust the notes into her bosom, and with a toss of her nose, as who should say, ’Here ’s nonsense they ‘re at again,’ tapped Susan on the other shoulder, and said imperiously:  ‘Come, Miss!’

Hurrying out a dozen sentences in one, Harry ended by suddenly kissing Susan’s cheek, and then Polly bore her away; and Harry, with great solemnity, said to Evan: 

’’Pon my honour, I think I ought to!  I declare I think I love that girl.  What’s one’s family?  Why shouldn’t you button to the one that just suits you?  That girl, when she’s dressed, and in good trim, by Jove! nobody ’d know her from a born lady.  And as for grammar, I’d soon teach her that.’

Harry began to whistle:  a sign in him that he was thinking his hardest.

‘I confess to being considerably impressed by the maid Wheedle,’ said Raikes.

‘Would you throw yourself away on her?’ Evan inquired.

Apparently forgetting how he stood, Mr. Raikes replied: 

’You ask, perhaps, a little too much of me.  One owes consideration to one’s position.  In the world’s eyes a matrimonial slip outweighs a peccadillo.  No.  To much the maid might wheedle me, but to Hymen!  She’s decidedly fresh and pert—­the most delicious little fat lips and cocky nose; but cease we to dwell on her, or of us two, to! one will be undone.’

Harry burst into a laugh:  ‘Is this the T.P. for Fallow field?’

‘M.P.  I think you mean,’ quoth Raikes, serenely; but a curious glance being directed on him, and pursuing him pertinaciously, it was as if the pediment of the lofty monument he topped were smitten with violence.  He stammered an excuse, and retreated somewhat as it is the fashion to do from the presence of royalty, followed by Harry’s roar of laughter, in which Evan cruelly joined.