In like manner our stricken Annette perceived the object; so did she gradually apprehend the fact of her being asked for Tinman’s bride, and she could not think it credible.  She half scented, she devised her plan of escape from another single mention of it.  But on her father’s remarking, with a shuffle, frightened by her countenance, “Don’t listen to what I said, Netty.  I won’t paint him blacker than he is”—­then Annette was sure she had been proposed for by Mr. Tinman, and she fancied her father might have revolved it in his mind that there was this means of keeping Tinman silent, silent for ever, in his own interests.

“It was not true, when you told Mr. Tinman I was engaged, papa,” she said.

“No, I know that.  Mart Tinman only half-kind of hinted.  Come, I say!  Where’s the unmarried man wouldn’t like to have a girl like you, Netty!  They say he’s been rejected all round a circuit of fifteen miles; and he’s not bad-looking, neither—­he looks fresh and fair.  But I thought it as well to let him know he might get me at a disadvantage, but he couldn’t you.  Now, don’t think about it, my love.”

“Not if it is not necessary, papa,” said Annette; and employed her familiar sweetness in persuading him to go to bed, as though he were the afflicted one requiring to be petted.

CHAPTER VII

Round under the cliffs by the sea, facing South, are warm seats in winter.  The sun that shines there on a day of frost wraps you as in a mantle.  Here it was that Mr. Herbert Fellingham found Annette, a chalk-block for her chair, and a mound of chalk-rubble defending her from the keen-tipped breath of the east, now and then shadowing the smooth blue water, faintly, like reflections of a flight of gulls.

Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies?  Those who write of their perplexities in descriptions comical in their length are unkind to them, by making them appear the simplest of the creatures of fiction; and most of us, I am sure, would incline to believe in them if they were only some bit more lightly touched.  Those troubled sentiments of our young lady of the comfortable classes are quite worthy of mention.  Her poor little eye poring as little fishlike as possible upon the intricate, which she takes for the infinite, has its place in our history, nor should we any of us miss the pathos of it were it not that so large a space is claimed for the exposure.  As it is, one has almost to fight a battle to persuade the world that she has downright thoughts and feelings, and really a superhuman delicacy is required in presenting her that she may be credible.  Even then—­so much being accomplished the thousands accustomed to chapters of her when she is in the situation of Annette will be disappointed by short sentences, just as of old the Continental eater of oysters would have been offended at the offer of an exchange of two live for two dozen dead ones.