“Wait a bit, Miss, wait a bit!” said Samuel, sawing the air again with his lean forefinger. “We can take a action again him, as I say, what will force him either to lead you to the altar or to pay you a substantial sum of money as damages.” A slow smile broke over Anne’s ill-favoured face. “D’ye mean him an’ me ’ud have to get married?” she inquired. “Either that or, supposin’ the villain wasn’t willin’—an’ he _is_ a villain, Miss Clarke, a low deceivin’ rascal—he’d have to put his hand in his pocket and _fork_ out, Miss. Either way, d’ye see, you’d be the gainer. But all _de_pends upon your memory. Now, in confidence, Miss Clarke, in strict confidence to a _h_onourable man, tell me, what did Trooper Willcocks say to you?” “He called I a beauty two or three times,” returned Anne, after cogitating for a moment. “Ah,” said Cross, “a—a nat’ral remark of course, but not compromising. He said more than that, I’m sure, Miss Clarke.” “He said,” she went on, knitting her brows in the effort to recall the trooper’s blandishments, “he said he wondered I’d remained single till now. The bwoys didn’t know what they was about, he said.” “That’s more like it!” cried Samuel, snapping his fingers joyfully. “Let’s follow up that tack, Miss Clarke, if _you_ please. Did he chance to say now as _he_ had better taste? That ’ud be a very likely remark for him to make, ye know. Don’t you recollect somethin’ of that sort, now?” “Nay,” said Anne, shaking her head, “I can’t call to mind as he did. He said as if my eyes was a pair there wouldn’t be their match in the country.” “Depend upon it you’ve made a mistake there, Miss,” said Cross, leaning forward and speaking with increased earnestness. “I dessay, bein’ a bit flurried at the time, you didn’t take reg’lar notice; but that ’ud be a silly thing for any one to say. You might be sure his remark really was somethin’ like this: ‘You an’ I should be a pair, Miss; I’ve come to make a match in the country.’ You see he _has_ come down to the country, and what more likely than that he’s come on purpose to find a wife?” Anne, fixing her interlocutor with one of the eyes alluded to in the gallant speech she had quoted, and rubbing her hands together, began to think it was very likely. “He—he kissed you, I s’pose, Miss Clarke?” went on the inquisitor presently. “He! he! he! ’Tis most unfair to ax such questions, but—” “He went for to do it once, but I did smack his face for ’en an’ he didn’t try no more,” put in Anne a trifle regretfully. “’Twould ha’ been better, I s’pose, if he had?” “Well, it would have been more compromising, but the great thing to go on is what he _said_. Try and remember that, Miss. He told you about the war an’ how lonesome he was out there, didn’t he? ‘No lovin’ faymales there,’ he said; so they tell me.” “’E-es,” agreed Anne. “He did say, ‘Little did I think out there on the veldt as I should so soon have my arm about a little charmer like you’.”