“Mamma, I haven’t shilly-shallied.”

“That’s what I call it.  Why can’t you speak him fair and tell him you’ll have him and settle yourself down properly?  You’ve got some idea into your silly head that what you call a gentleman will come after you.”

“Mamma, that isn’t fair.”

“Very well, miss.  As your father takes your part of course you can say what you please to me.  I say it is so.”  Mary knew very well what her another meant and was safe at least from any allusion to Reginald Morton.  There was an idea prevalent in the house, and not without some cause, that Mr. Surtees the curate had looked with an eye of favour on Mary Masters.  Mr. Surtees was certainly a gentleman, but his income was strictly limited to the sum of 120 pounds per annum which he received from Mr. Mainwaring.  Now Mrs. Masters disliked clergymen, disliked gentlemen, and especially disliked poverty; and therefore was not disposed to look upon Mr. Surtees as an eligible suitor for her stepdaughter.  But as the curate’s courtship had hitherto been of the coldest kind and as it had received no encouragement from the young lady, Mary was certainly justified in declaring that the allusion was not fair.  “What I want to know is this;—­are you prepared to marry Lawrence Twentyman?” To this question, as Mary could not give a favourable answer, she thought it best to make none at all.  “There is a man as has got a house fit for any woman, and means to keep it; who can give a young woman everything that she ought to want;—­and a handsome fellow too, with some life in him; one who really dotes on you,—­as men don’t often do on young women now as far as I can see.  I wonder what it is you would have?”

“I want nothing, mamma.”

“Yes you do.  You have been reading books of poetry till you don’t know what it is you do want.  You’ve got your head full of claptraps and tantrums till you haven’t a grain of sense belonging to you.  I hate such ways.  It’s a spurning of the gifts of Providence not to have such a man as Lawrence Twentyman when he comes in your way.  Who are you, I wonder, that you shouldn’t be contented with such as him?  He’ll go and take some one else and then you’ll be fit to break your heart, fretting after him, and I shan’t pity you a bit.  It’ll serve you right and you’ll die an old maid, and what there will be for you to live upon God in heaven only knows.  You’re breaking your father’s heart, as it is.”  Then she sat down in a rocking-chair and throwing her apron over her eyes gave herself up to a deluge of hysterical tears.

This was very hard upon Mary for though she did not believe all the horrible things which her stepmother said to her she did believe some of them.  She was not afraid of the fate of an old maid which was threatened, but she did think that her marriage with this man would be for the benefit of the family and a great relief to her father.  And she knew too that he was respectable, and believed him to be thoroughly