The Reverend Godfrey Blunt was one of this nameless host. At school he had scraped into the Sixth by a hair's-breadth; at the University he had secured a degree of purely nominal value. He had been an unheroic member of his House eleven; thereafter he had excoriated his person uncomplainingly and unsuccessfully upon a fixed seat for the space of three years, not because he expected to make bumps or obtain his Blue, but because his College second crew had need of him. Since then he had worked for five years in a parish in Bermondsey, at a stipend of one hundred pounds a-year; and only the doctor's ultimatum had prevailed on him to try country work for a change. His spelling was shaky, his theology would have made Pusey turn in his grave, and his sermons would have bored his own mother. But he was a man. Cilly, whom we left bashfully contemplating her shoe-buckles under an oak-tree, was conscious of a new, sudden, and disturbing thrill. Young girls are said seldom to reflect and never to reason. They have no need. They have methods of their own of arriving at the root of the matter. Cilly realised in a flash that if a proper man was the object of her proposed journey through the great and enticing world before her, she need never set out at all. Something answering to that description was sitting beside her, sighing like a furnace. Her face flamed. "What did you say?" she inquired unsteadily. "I said 'What price me?'" reiterated the curate mournfully. "What do you mean?" "I mean----" he spoke hesitatingly, like a man picking his words from an overwhelming crowd of applicants--"well, I mean this. You and I have seen a lot of each other since I came here. You have been awfully good to me, and I have got into the way of bringing you my little troubles, and turning to you generally if I felt dismal or humpy. (There _are_ more joyful spots, you know, to spend one's leisure hours in than Mrs Tice's first-floor-front.) And now--now you are going away from me, to meet all sorts of attractive people and have the time of your life. You will have a fearful lot of attention paid to you. Nine out of ten men you meet will fall in love with you----" "Oh! nonsense!" said Cilly feebly. "But I _know_ it," persisted Blunt. "I simply can't conceive any man being able to do anything else. Do you know----" the words stuck in his throat for a moment and then came with a rush--"do you know that you are the most adorable girl on God's earth? I love you! I love you! _There_--I've said it! I had meant to say a lot more first--work up to it by degrees, you know--but it has carried me away of its own accord. I love you--dear, _dear_ Cilly!"