Yes, Jared Pellet would, even though his wife had entered, and was looking at him with imploring eyes. For Jared had a certain pride of his own, and a respect for his brother's high position. And besides, he told himself bitterly that it was not meet that the stepson of a Croesus should marry with "a beggar's brat." So Jared would keep to his word, and Mrs Jared could only sympathise with the young man, holding the while, though by a strange contradiction, to her husband. Harry gave vent to a good deal of romantic saccharine stuff of twenty-one vintage, interspersed with the sea saltism of "true as the needle to the pole," and various other high-flown sentiments, which mode of expressing himself, tending as it did to show his admiration for her daughter, and coming from a fine, handsome, and manly young suitor, Mrs Jared thought very nice indeed; but she diluted its strength with a few tears of her own. Jared was obstinate though, and would not look; he only screwed up his lips and covered pianoforte hammers at express speed, making his fingers sticky and wasting felt; for every hammer had to be re-covered when Harry had taken his departure. Harry was gone, with one hand a little sticky from the touch of Jared's gluey fingers, as he said, "Good-bye," and one cheek wet with Mrs Jared's tears, as he saluted her reverently, as if she had been his mother. "But a nice lad, dear," said Mrs Jared, wiping her eyes. "Yes; I dare say," said Jared, stirring his glue round and round; "but mighty fond of kissing." Then husband and wife thought of the strange tie growing out of the new estrangement, and also of the fact that they must be growing old, since their child was following in their own steps--in the footprints of those who had gone before since Adam first gazed upon the fair face of the woman given to be his companion and solace in the solitude that oppressed him. And where was Patty? Down upon her knees in her little bedroom, whither she had fled on hearing that voice, sobbing tremendously, as if her fluttering heart would break--her handkerchief being vainly used to silence the emotion. Poor Mrs Jared was quite disconcerted by her child's reproachful looks when she told her that it might be but a passing fancy, that their position was so different, that years and distance generally wrought changes, and she must learn to govern her heart. Just as if it were possible that such a man as Harry Clayton--so bold, so frank, so handsome, so--so--so--so--everything--could ever alter in the least. So Patty cried and then laughed, and said she was foolish, and then cried again, and behaved in a very extravagant way, hoping that Harry would write and tell her, if only just once more, that he loved her.