"I always do my own marketing," she said to Lawrence, in answer to his look of surprise. "It amuses me, and I get much better things. My poor dear cousins don't understand marketing a bit--though they ought to. That's the reason why they never get on, somehow. I believe marketing is the best school in the world for learning what's worth having and what isn't. Don't you?" "I never had a chance to learn," laughed Lawrence. "I wish you'd teach me how to get on, as you call it." "Oh--it's very easy! You only need know exactly what you want, and then try to get it as hard as you can. Most people don't know, and don't try." "For that matter I know perfectly well what I want." "Then why don't you try and get it?" asked Fanny, pausing at the door of another shop as though interested in his answer. "I'm not sure that it's in the market," answered the young man, his eyes in hers. "Have you enquired?" Fanny's mouth twitched with the coming smile. "No--not exactly. I'm trying to find out by inspection." "If you don't think it's likely to be too dear, you'd better ask--whatever it is." "Money couldn't buy it. Besides, I've got none," added Lawrence. "You might get it on credit," said Fanny. "But I think it's very doubtful." Thereupon she entered the shop, and Lawrence followed her, meditating deeply upon his chances, and asking himself whether he should run the great risk at once, or wait and watch Brinsley. To tell the truth, he thought his own chances very small; for he under-estimated all his advantages by looking at them in the light of his present poverty, not seeing that in so doing he might be underestimating Fanny Trehearne as well. A somewhat excessive caution, which sometimes goes with timidity, though not at all of the sort which produces cowardice, is often the result of an education which has not brought a man closely into competition with other men. No one in common sense, save the Miss Miners and Lawrence himself, could have imagined that Brinsley had a chance against him. For anything that people knew, Brinsley might turn out to be an adventurer of the worst kind, whereas Lawrence was of good birth, a man of whom many knew who he was, and whence he came, and that he had as good a right to ask for Fanny's hand as any man. He was poor just now, but no one believed that his rich uncle, a childless widower of fifty-five, would marry again, and Lawrence was sure to have money in the end, though he might wait thirty years for it.