"No matter. Go and try, I say." "I--do--think--you--understand--me, sir," cried Tom, slowly and dubiously. "I--hope there is no mistake!" "Rubbish about mistake!" cried old Paul, pushing him towards the door. "Go and do as I bid you. Try." He went to look for Emma, and saw her sitting under the acacia tree on the bench, which faced the other way. Stepping noiselessly over the grass, he put his arms on her shoulders, and she turned round with a cry. But Tom would not let her go. "I am told to come out and _try_, Emma. I want a wife, and your father thinks I may gain one. He is going to make me his partner; and he says he thinks I am a match for any good girl. And I am not going to London." She turned pale and red, red and pale, and then burst into a fit of tears and trembling. "Oh, Tom, can it be true! Oh, Tom, Tom!" And Tom kissed her for the first time in his life. But not for the last. The news came out to us in a lump. Tom Chandler was taken into partnership and was to marry Emma. We wished them good luck. She was not to leave her home, for her father would not spare her: she and Tom were to live with him. "I had to do it, you know, Squire," said old Paul, meeting the Squire one day. "Only children are apt to be wilful. Not that I ever found Emma so. Had I not allowed it, I expect she'd have dutifully saddled herself, an old maid, upon me for life." "She could not have chosen better," cried the Squire, warmly. "If there's one young fellow I respect above another, it's Tom Chandler. He is good to the back-bone." "He wouldn't have got her if he were not; you may rely upon that," concluded old Paul, emphatically. So the wedding took place at Islip in the autumn, and old Paul gave Tom a month's holiday, and told him he had better take Emma to Paris; as they both seemed, by what he could gather, red-hot to see it. * * * * * Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle, came down the rain, dropping with monotonous patter on the decaying leaves that strewed the garden. Not the trim well-kept garden it used to be, but showing signs of neglect. What with the long grass, and the leaves, and the sloppy roads, and the November skies, nothing could well look more dreary than the world looked to-day, as seen from the windows of North Villa. Time had gone on, another year, bringing its events and its changes; as time always does bring. The chief change, as connected with this little record, lay in Valentine Chandler. He had gone to the dogs. That was Islip's expression for it, not mine. A baby had come to Tom and Emma.