STORY FIVE: NIL DES. STORY FIVE, CHAPTER ONE. JOHN RICHARDS' HOUSEKEEPER. "Git along, do, with such clat." "But, Keziah--dear--only listen to me! Here's winter coming on fast, and what could be a better time for getting it over? What's cold got to do with it, Keziah, when there's a warm and manly heart beating away for you at such a rate as to keep you warm and itself too? Say yes, Keziah!" "I won't." "Only think of how happy we should be, with you at your housekeeping, and me with my tallers!" "And smelling ten times worse of burnt mutton-chops than you do now when you come." "Smell, Keziah! Oh, what's smell when him as smells loves you? Ah, Keziah! I did think you'd got a heart that I could melt like good quality fat; but it's a stringy and gristly heart, Keziah, one as is full of pride. On my bended knees I ask you to say yes." "Git up, do, with your clat. The idee of going down on the carpet like that, just for all the world like a man in a stage-play. Such stuff indeed. If you don't get up directly I'll run out of the room, that I will. Do you take me for a silly girl? at my time of life too." "No, Keziah," said the man of bended knees, rising slowly to stand once more, a fat, podgy little fellow, whose anxious face grew more ludicrous each moment. "No, Keziah, I only take you for a very hard-hearted woman." "Don't be a noodles, Peter," exclaimed Keziah. "Didn't I always tell you, when I gave consent for you to come and see me, that I'd never think of marrying till Miss May was settled?" "Yes, you did," said Peter, "but she's such a long time over it." "Stuff!" said Keziah. "But she is indeed," cried Peter, trying to catch one of the lady's hands in his. "You see she's only nineteen, and can afford to wait a few years. But you see, dear, I'm forty, and you are--" "Yes, I know, I'm forty, too, and I'm not ashamed of it, so you needn't twit me with that," said Keziah snappishly. "I'm in no hurry to change my name into Pash--Pash indeed. I'm sure Bay's ever so much better." "It is! I know it is," said Peter, "and I didn't twit you about your years. Ain't I always said that you were just growing into your prime? But I see how it is: it's pride--it's the pride of the composites, Keziah, and you're trying to throw me over after I've been a true lover all these years." "Are you going to talk sense; or am I to leave you to chatter that sickly twaddle to the cat?--true lover indeed!"