"The Lord only grant me the chance of it!" he replied, with the happy rashness of young men. It was not for me to speak against my sister; but I knew all her little ins and outs, and I daresay she thought that she knew mine. "Let me come down to your happy valley," he continued, with that contempt of my ideas, which I always leave Time to redress, and have seldom found him fail to do it. "I want to see this perfect wonder. Why, Shakespeare himself can have never created any heroine to compare with her. It is out of possibility, my dear George. Bless my heart--Imogen, Portia, Miranda, Rosalind, Juliet, Ophelia--no, she was weak--Sylvia, Helena, half a dozen others rolled into one, down in that little hole! I want to see her, that I may learn to despise the best English girl ever born; or try to pretend to do it, if she won't have me. Do you suppose I was born yesterday?" When a man carries on like this, you may say what you like--though you are Solomon's Mahatma--without getting a spark of wisdom into him. I longed for Tom Erricker, who could always float on the top of a flood, because he was so light; and in a weak sort of way I had wanted him often, not to unload my mind upon him--for you might as well trust your watch to a floating bladder--but to see him look buoyant, when my mouth was full of brine. But Tom had been summoned by his electroplating parent to fall in love with a very nice young lady, whose father made dish-covers fluted in the rough. Those people had some shooting, and Tom thought that he could shoot. At any rate, it was better for him than the Bar. "You shall not come near my happy valley,"--it would never have done for me to encourage this,--"remember what you said of the hero who lives there. You took him for a forger, or a ticket-of-leave man." "Well, I don't care a fig what he is, so long as he gives you satisfaction. But about Grace--I tell you I won't wait. If she kissed her hand to me, is not that enough to show--I shall be there to-morrow; but you must not let her know." "Not to-morrow, Jackson. Why, it is her butter-day. And if she could ever cut up rough, I believe it would be the butter, at this time of year." "Not a bit of it. Nothing would ever make her peppery. And she is sure to be at home, and up in your part of the premises. That is where she looks the most enthralling. But don't let her know, for the world, that I am coming." It was fair that he should have his own way at last, after giving Grace a luxury of time to think about him, since his offer was made about ten days ago, when she put all the blame of her shilly-shally upon me! See how differently I did everything.