"_Don't you!_ You'll be a muff to the end, lad. Fancy a fine young fellow like Reste, a man of the world, staying on at that pokey little place of Barbary's unless he had some strong motive to keep him there! I dare say he pays Barbary well for the accommodation." "I dare say Barbary could not afford to entertain him unless he did." "He stops there to make love to her. It must be a poor look-out, though, for Katrine, pretty little dimpled girl! As much chance of a wedding, I should say, as of a blue moon." "Why not?" "Why not! Want of funds. I'd start for London, if I were you, Johnny, and set the Thames on fire. A man must be uncommonly hard up when he lets all the birds go beside him for want of taking out a licence." They were walking onwards slowly, Mr. Reste bending to talk to her. And of course it will be understood that a good deal of that which I have said, and am about to say, is only related from what came to my knowledge later on. "Is it true that you had meant to go abroad this year?" Katrine was asking him. "Yes, I once thought of it," he answered. "I have friends living at Dieppe, and they wanted me to go to them. But I have stayed on here instead. Another week of it, ten days perhaps, and then I must leave Worcestershire and you, Katrine." "But why?" "Why, to work, my dear little girl. That is getting in arrears shamefully. We are told that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy; but all play and no work would have worse results for Jack than dullness. Ah, Katrine, what a world this might be if we could only do as we like in it!" "When shall you come again?" "Perhaps never," he answered, incautiously. "Never!" she repeated, her face turning white before she could hide it from him. It was a great shock. "Katrine, my dear," he said with some emotion, his tones low and earnest, "I could stay at Caramel Cottage for my whole life and never wish to quit it, unless I carried somebody else away from it with me. But there are things which a poor man, a man without money in the present or prospect of it in the future, may not as much as glance at: he must put the temptation from him and hold it at arm's length. I had a dream the other night," he added, after a pause: "I thought I was a Q.C. and stood in my silk, haranguing a full bench of judges at Westminster--who listened to me with attentive suavity. When I awoke I burst out laughing." "At the contrast it presented to reality?" she breathed. "Just at that. If I were only making enough to set up a snug little nest of a home, though ever so small, it would be--something: but I am not. And so, Katrine, you see that many things I would do I cannot do; cannot even think of. And there it lies, and there it ends." "Yes, I see, Edgar," she answered, softly sighing. "Shall you miss me when I am gone?" Some queer feeling took her throat; she could not speak. Mr. Reste stopped to pick a little pale blue-bell that grew under the hedge.