"If _you_ wish, Sid," was the courteous answer; "I have no wish to hear anything that you would desire to keep back from me. If you think I can be of no use to you, give you no advice, offer no consolation that you may think worthy of acceptance, and if," with a very wistful glance towards him, "you consider it a matter that concerns yourself alone, why I--I don't wish to intrude upon your confidence." "I don't think that we have had any secrets from each other yet; I don't see any reason why we should begin to get mysterious, father," Sidney replied; "and so, here's the full, true, and particular account." Mr. Hinchford edged his chair nearer to his son, the son turned and looked his father in the face, blushing just a little at the beginning of his narrative. "It's an odd thing for one _man_ to tell another," he said quickly, "but it's what you ought to know, and though it makes me wince a little, it's soon over. I've been thinking of engaging myself to----" "Not to another firm, Sid--_now_?" cried the father, as he paused. "To Harriet Wesden, down-stairs." "God bless me!" Mr. Hinchford passed his hands through his scanty white hairs, stroked his moustache, blew at an imaginary something in the air, loosened his stock, and gasped a little. His son engaging himself to be married was a new element to perplex him; he had never believed in human nature, or the Hinchford nature, taking that turn for years and years. Once or twice he had thought that his careful son might some day look around him and _marry well_; but that at twenty years of age he should have fallen in love, was a miracle that took some minutes to believe in. "Well," he said at last. "I should have said, father, that I had been thinking of an engagement--a long one to end in a happy marriage, when there was fair sailing for all of us--and that my thoughts found words when I least expected them, and surprised Harriet by their suddenness. I told her I loved her, and she told me that she didn't--and there's an end of it! We need not speak of the affair again, you know." "'And that she didn't!'" quoted the father, "why, that's more amazing still!" "On the contrary, that is the most natural part of it." "And she really said--" "She said that she did not want any more of my jaw--rather more elegantly expressed, but that is what she meant. Well, I _was_ a fool!"