Whatever tender flutterings might disturb the bosoms of the young ladies in the galleries, Christopher cared not. His heart was fixed on Barbara. Barbara, who surely deserves a paragraph to herself, was provokingly pretty, to begin with, and she had a fascinating natural way which made young men and young women alike unhappy. She bubbled over--pardon this kitchen simile--with unaffected gaiety; she charmed, she bewitched, she delighted, she made angry and bewitched again. The young ladies very naturally saw nothing in her, but a certain pert forwardness of which themselves would not be guilty, though it should bring a world of young gentlemen sighing to their feet. Barbara was nineteen, and she had a voice which for gaiety and sweetness was like that of a throstle. Christopher had himself taught her to sing. His own voice was cacophonous and funereal, and it was droll to hear him solemnly phrasing ‘I will enchant thine ear’ for the instruction of his enchantress. But he was a good master, and Barbara prospered under him, and added a professional finish and exactness to her natural graces. She lived alone with an old uncle who had sold everything to buy an annuity, and she had no expectations from anybody. Christopher had no expectations either, except of a stiff struggle with the world, but the two young people loved each other, and, having their choice of proverbs, they discarded the one which relates to poverty and a door and love and a window, and selected for their own guidance that cheerful saying which sets forth the belief that what is enough for one is enough for two. Christopher, therefore, bent himself like a man to earn enough for one, and up to the time of the beginning of this history had achieved a qualified failure. Barbara believed in his genius, but so far nobody else did, and the look-out was not altogether cheerful. Barbara’s surname was Allen, but her godfathers and godmothers at her baptism had been actuated by no reminiscences of ballad poetry, and she was called Barbara because her godmother was called Barbara and was ready to present her with a silver caudle-cup on condition that the baby bore her name. Christopher knew the sweet and quaint old ballad, and introduced it to his love, who was charmed to discover herself like-named with a heroine of fiction. She used to sing it to him in private, and sometimes to her uncle, but it was exclusively a home song. Christopher made a violin setting of it which Barbara used to accompany on the pianoforte, a setting in which the poor old song was tortured into wild cadenzas and dizzy cataracts of caterwauling after the approved Italian manner.