get themselves married before they venture to begin working for a living.  Mrs Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr Gruffen, with all the danger to herself.  But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs Dale’s eldest daughter.  At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr Gruffen’s sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice.  Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none.  Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do?

It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor’s life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative.  He made no declaration to Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his prudence prevented him.  To Mrs Dale he did speak, not openly avowing his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments.  “It is not that I complain of being poor as I am,” said he, “or at any rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present.”

“But it will increase, will it not?” said Mrs Dale.

“It may some day, when I am becoming an old man,” he said.  “But of what use will it be to me then?”

Mrs Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance.  He had not even mentioned Bell’s name, and had he done so she could only have bade him wait and hope.  After that he said nothing further to her upon the subject.  To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an autumn day, when Mrs Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind her heart to his.  He repeated that story of his income, and explained to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented him from thinking of marriage.  “I suppose