“I was thinking,” said Dicky, “that as we had run away so far we might complete the job, only——” “Only what?” “I’ve only five and sixpence in my pockets.” “Is my hat straight?” “Perfectly—I wish you’d be serious.” “Serious about running away with only five and sixpence between us?” “No, it’s not that,” he replied rather grumpily. There was silence, for a moment. The ground here was high, and gave a view of vast prospects of dull grey weather, land, locked in the sleep of winter; woods, fields, waste lands, vague hills all neutral-tinted under the grey, drifting sky. You could see the smoke rising from tiny cabins, you could hear, now and again, the crowing of cocks very far away, you could hear occasionally the melancholy toot of a horn from the invisible Shan, hunting his hares somewhere in the invisible distance, a figure remote from actuality as a huntsman in a dream. A weak wind blew warm from the south, stirring the withered leaves in the hedge, and a little bird was singing somewhere near by. “If it were all like this,” said the girl, with a sigh, “it wouldn’t be bad.” “What?” “Running away.” “It will be better than this,” said he, putting his arm round her waist. -------------- “I wish I knew his name,” said Mr Fanshawe, after the lapse of five minutes or so, “and I’d—pension him.” “Who?” “That fellow who hit Boxall on the head with the bag of soot.” -------------- “It’s like a dream,” she murmured. “Do you know, Dicky, I don’t think I was really in love with you this morning—it has all come with a rush—this is the _real_ thing.” “The only thing!” murmured Dicky, speaking into the back of her hair. -------------- “Is my hat straight?” asked Miss Lestrange. “Perfectly—no, let me tilt it a bit—bless it!—that’s right—to think that it’s mine, and you are mine, and your little boots and every bit of you!” “You, too,” she said, casting over him a loving glance. “When it comes to the point,” he said, “I know you’ll be brave. Believe me, it is the only thing to do. I can get a special licence, there will be no difficulty—Aunt Domville will arrange. I’ll write to the Archbishop of Dublin to-day, and his secretary can interview her; it can be done at her house immediately we arrive. We must give a reason for getting a special licence, and the reason I’ll give is that I’m going abroad in a hurry—which,” added Mr Fanshawe, with a grin, “will be the fact, for we’ll go straight to Nice for the honeymoon. Violet, in three days from this you will be my wife.” “But Dicky—_how_ will we get away?”