"There! that's an earnest of our new friendship. Not that I shall be giving you kisses in future, or expect any from you. Lucy might not like it, you know, or you either. I don't say _I_ should, for I may be marrying on my own score. We might have been an estranged man and wife, Travice, wishing each other dead and buried and perhaps not gone to heaven, every day of our lives. We will be two firm friends. You don't reject _me_, you know; _I_ reject you, and you can't help yourself." "We will be friends always, Barbara," he said, from the depths of his inmost heart, as he held her warm hand on his breast. "I am beginning to love you as one already." "There's a darling fellow! Yes, I should call you so though Lucy were present. Oh, Travice! it's best as it is! A little bit of smart to get over--and that's what I have been doing the past week or so--and we begin on a truer basis. I never was suited to you, and that's the truth. But we can be the best friends living. It won't spoil my appetite, Travice; I'm not of that flimsy temperament. Fancy _me_ getting brain-fever through being crossed in love!" She laughed out loud at the thought--a ringing, merry laugh. It put Travice at ease on the score of the "smart." "And now I'm going into the manufactory to tell Mr. Arkell that you and I are _two_. If he asks for the cause, perhaps I shall whisper to him that I've found out you won't suit me and I prefer to look out for somebody that will; and when Mrs. Arkell asks it me, 'We've split, ma'am--split' I shall tell her. Travice! Travice! did you really think I could stand, knowing it, in the way of anybody's life's happiness?" He drew her face down to his. He kissed it as he had never kissed it before. "Friends for life! Firm, warm friends for life, you and I and Lucy! God bless you, Barbara!" "Mind! I stand out for a jolly ball at the wedding! Lizzie and I mean to dance all night. Fancy us!" she added, with a laugh that rang through the room, "the two forlorn damsels that were to have been brides ourselves! Never mind; we shan't die for the lack of husbands, if we choose to accept them. But it's to be hoped our second ventures will turn out more substantial than our first." And Travice Arkell, nearly overcome with emotion and weakness, closed his eyes and folded his hands as she went laughing from the room, his lips faintly moving. "What can I do unto God for all the benefits that He hath done unto me?"