day bygone! You're growing lean on it, Mart, like a recollection fifty
years old."

"You have never forgiven me that day, Philip!"

"Jealous, am I? Take the money, give up the girl, and see what friends
we'll be. I'll back your buyings, I'll advertise your sellings. I'll
pay a painter to paint you in your Court suit, and hang up a copy of you
in my diningroom."

"Annette is here," said Tinman, who had been showing Etna's tokens of
insurgency.

He admired Annette. Not till latterly had Herbert Fellingham been so
true an admirer of Annette as Tinman was. She looked sincere and she
dressed inexpensively. For these reasons she was the best example of
womankind that he knew, and her enthusiasm for England had the
sympathetic effect on him of obscuring the rest of the world, and
thrilling him with the reassuring belief that he was blest in his blood
and his birthplace--points which her father, with his boastings of
Gippsland, and other people talking of scenes on the Continent,
sometimes disturbed in his mind.

"Annette," said he, "I come requesting to converse with you in private."

"If you wish it--I would rather not," she answered.

Tinman raised his head, as often at Helmstone when some offending
shopwoman was to hear her doom.