"No, I wouldn't. I couldn't. But I should like--in good earnest, Mrs. Riley, I should like, now, the comfort of knowing that you were not to pass all the rest of your days in widowhood." "Ah! ged out, Mr. Richlin'!" She failed in her effort to laugh. "Ah! ye're sly!" She changed her attitude and drew a breath. "No," said Richling, "no, honestly. I should feel that you deserved better at this world's hands than that, and that the world deserved better of you. I find two people don't make a world, Mrs. Riley, though often they think they do. They certainly don't when one is gone." "Mr. Richlin'," exclaimed Mrs. Riley, drawing back and waving her hand sweetly, "stop yer flattery! Stop ud! Ah! ye're a-feeling yer oats, Mr. Richlin'. An' ye're a-showin' em too, ye air. Why, I hered ye was lookin' terrible, and here ye're lookin' just splendud!" "Who told you that?" asked Richling. "Never mind! Never mind who he was--ha, ha, ha!" She checked herself suddenly. "Ah, me! It's a shame for the likes o' me to be behavin' that foolish!" She put on additional dignity. "I will always be the Widow Riley." Then relaxing again into sweetness: "Marridge is a lottery, Mr. Richlin'; indeed an' it is; and ye know mighty well that he ye're after joking me about is no more nor a fri'nd." She looked sweet enough for somebody to kiss. "I don't know so certainly about that," said her visitor, stepping down upon the sidewalk and putting on his hat. "If I may judge by"-- He paused and glanced at the window. "Ah, now, Mr. Richlin', na-na-now, Mr. Richlin', ye daurn't say ud! Ye daurn't!" She smiled and blushed and arched her neck and rose and sank upon herself with sweet delight. "I say if I may judge by what he has said to me," insisted Richling. Mrs. Riley glided down across the door-step, and, with all the insinuation of her sex and nation, demanded:-- "What'd he tell ye? Ah! he didn't tell ye nawthing! Ha, ha! there wasn' nawthing to tell!" But Richling slipped away. Mrs. Riley shook her finger: "Ah, ye're a wicket joker, Mr. Richlin'. I didn't think that o' the likes of a gintleman like you, anyhow!" She shook her finger again as she withdrew into the house, smiling broadly all the way in to the cradle, where she kissed and kissed again her ruddy, chubby, sleeping boy. * * * Ristofalo came often. He was a man of simple words, and of few thoughts of the kind that were available in conversation; but his personal adventures had begun almost with infancy, and followed one another in close and strange succession over lands and seas ever since. He could therefore talk best about himself, though he talked modestly. "These things to hear would Desdemona seriously incline," and there came times when even a tear was not wanting to gem the poetry of the situation. "And ye might have saved yerself from all that," was sometimes her note of sympathy. But when he asked how she silently dried her eyes.