had done Mr. Ramsay. Mrs. Sykes found fault with her once or twice, but
did not find her all meekness.

"Why do you talk of 'an elegant breeze'?" she said to her one day.

"For the same reason that you spoke of 'a beautiful roast' yesterday,"
retorted the young lady, who might be broken-hearted, but was certainly
not broken-spirited. "I know better, and I suppose you do, but we are both
careless."

Matters drifted along in this way until a certain morning spent by Mr.
Ramsay at the Browns',--eventful because a little thing happened which
convinced him that Bijou cared for him. He came home with a new pang
substituted for those he had been enduring for a lover's age. After dinner
he tramped off for a long walk alone, in the course of which it may fairly
be presumed that he decided what course to take, for early on the
following day he called especially, for the second time, upon Mr. Brown.

"I have come to tell you that I can't come here any more," he said,
holding his hat with his accustomed grace, and going in his
straightforward fashion immediately to the subject in his mind. "And I
wish to thank you for bein' so kind to me and receivin' me as you have
done, and to tell you why I am actin' in this way."

"Why, what's the matter? Going away? Isn't this rather sudden?" asked
Brown _p?_, all unsuspicious of what was to come.

"Oh, it isn't _that_! Though of course I shall be goin'. It is that I
can't marry. That is what it is. You should have been told of it before,
by rights, only I kept puttin' it off. You have a perfect right to blame