fair with him, and I do not doubt but he will act honourably by me.
But Conachar's sudden leave taking has put me to some inconvenience.
He had things under his charge. I must look through the booth."

"Can I help you, father?" said Henry Gow, deceived by the earnestness
of his manner.

"You!--no," said Simon, with a dryness which made Henry so sensible
of the simplicity of his proposal, that he blushed to the eyes at
his own dulness of comprehension, in a matter where love ought to
have induced him to take his cue easily up.

"You, Catharine," said the glover, as he left the room, "entertain
your Valentine for five minutes, and see he departs not till my
return. Come hither with me, old Dorothy, and bestir thy limbs in
my behalf."

He left the room, followed by the old woman; and Henry Smith remained
with Catharine, almost for the first time in his life, entirely
alone. There was embarrassment on the maiden's part, and awkwardness
on that of the lover, for about a minute; when Henry, calling up
his courage, pulled the gloves out of his pocket with which Simon
had supplied him, and asked her to permit one who had been so highly
graced that morning to pay the usual penalty for being asleep at the
moment when he would have given the slumbers of a whole twelvemonth
to be awake for a single minute.

"Nay, but," said Catharine, "the fulfilment of my homage to St.
Valentine infers no such penalty as you desire to pay, and I cannot
therefore think of accepting them."