“We have spent nine shillings and tenpence, Peter!”

“Good, indeed!” said I.

“Leaving exactly—­twopence over.”

“A penny for you, and a penny for me.”

“I fear I am a very bad housekeeper, Peter.”

“On the contrary.”

“You earn ten shillings a week.”

“Well?”

“And here is exactly—­twopence left—­oh, Peter!”

“You are forgetting the tea and the beef, and—­and the other luxuries,” said I, struck by the droop of her mouth.

“But you work so very, very hard, and earn so little and that little—­”

“I work that I may live, Charmian, and lo!  I am alive.”

“And dreadfully poor!”

“And ridiculously happy.”

“I wonder why?” said she, beginning to draw designs on the page before her.

“Indeed, though I have asked myself that question frequently of late, I have as yet found no answer, unless it be my busy, care-free life, with the warm sun about me and the voice of the wind in the trees.”

“Yes, perhaps that is it.”

“And yet I don’t know,” I went on thoughtfully, “for now I come to think of it, my life has always been busy and care-free, and I have always loved the sun and the sound of wind in trees—­yet, like Horace, have asked ‘What is Happiness?’ and looked for it in vain; and now, here—­in this out-of-the-world spot, working as a village smith, it has come to me all unbidden and unsought—­which is very strange!”

“Yes, Peter,” said Charmian, still busy with her pen.

“Upon consideration I think my thanks are due to my uncle for dying and leaving me penniless.”

“Do you mean that he disinherited you?”

“In a way, yes; he left me his whole fortune provided that I married a certain lady within the year.”

“A certain lady?”

“The Lady Sophia Sefton, of Cambourne,” said I.

Charmian’s pen stopped in the very middle of a letter, and she bent down to examine what she had been writing.

“Oh!” said she very softly, “the Lady Sophia Sefton of Cambourne?”

“Yes,” said I.

“And—­your cousin—­Sir Maurice—­were the conditions the same in his case?”

“Precisely!”

“Oh!” said Charmian, just as softly as before, “and this lady —­she will not—­marry you?”

“No,” I answered.

“Are you quite—­sure?”

“Certain!—­you see, I never intend to ask her.”

Charmian suddenly raised her head and looked at me,

“Why not, Peter?”

“Because, should I ever marry—­a remote contingency, and most improbable—­I am sufficiently self-willed to prefer to exert my own choice in the matter; moreover, this lady is a celebrated toast, and it would be most repugnant to me that my wife’s name should ever have been bandied from mouth to mouth, and hiccoughed out over slopping wineglasses—­”

The pen slipped from Charmian’s fingers to the floor, and before I could pick it up she had forestalled me, so that when she raised her head she was flushed with stooping.