“A _protégée_? Younger than your disciples usually are,” he remarks. “Ah, to be sure--that must be the Annie of the violets? My dear Bertram, surely chivalry should suggest that we should carry her baskets for her? If you will take the one, I will take the other.” Bertram deigns no answer. He feels considerably annoyed, and gazes at the cupola of the hotel in front of him. Marlow digs holes in the gravel with his cane. “What an opportunity lost of practical illustration of your doctrines, and--she’s got a smart pair of ankles; rather thick, but still----” Bertram continues to gaze abstractedly at the hotel roof. “But why, oh why, let her wear highlows?” continues Marlow. “They would deform a goddess.” Suddenly, with the sense of taking a plunge into water of unknown depth, the man whom he torments faces what he considers an imperative obligation. “The young person in the highlows is my future wife,” he says between his teeth. “You will be so good as to make your jokes about some other matter than her ankles.” Marlow stares, utterly incredulous and stupefied. “Good Lord! you can’t mean it! Your wife? Why, she is--she is--she is a very decent sort of girl no doubt; I should be sorry to imply the contrary, but----” “Be so good as to understand that I am not in jest. That is the--the--the daughter of the people who I am about to marry.” “Oh, Lord!” Marlow drops into a chair, so astonished that he could not recover his speech. Annie is too far off to hear, and there is no one else within earshot except a groom on the other side of the rails; the policeman has gone on down the road. “I was much to blame,” says Bertram, in his chilliest manner, “not to make the announcement yesterday when you asked who were the Brown family. My reticence was a weakness of which I am sincerely ashamed.” He has done what he believes that courage, truth, and loyalty to this poor little girl with the primrose skips demanded, but doing our duty, unhappily, is apt to leave a shivery and prickly sensation behind it, and his reasons do not, even to himself, appear so logical, admirable, and clear as they had done three months ago. And why will she say “_liberry_” and “_umberellar_”? and her ankles certainly are thick! He tries to remember Sybil in Disraeli’s romance of that name, but he cannot conceal from his mind that Annie is not in the very least like Sybil, if he himself somewhat resembles Egremont. “And may I tell people?” asks Marlow, with his eyes staring wide open. “You may tell every one. The office of bellman to society is, I believe, very congenial to you.” “Eh? Lord, how they will laugh! They’ll die of laughin’.” Bertram reddens angrily. “No doubt they will laugh. Such laughter is still as like the crackling of thorns under a pot as it was in the days of Solomon.” Marlow continues to stare stupidly. “Are you sure you aren’t jokin’? chaffin’? humbuggin’?” he asks.