Miss Ruth, elderly and kind hearted, was an inveterate matchmaker. As she explained to her bosom friend, Mrs. Brooke-Hoskyn, "My dear," she said, "I’ve lived three years with a tragic instance of what comes of blighted affections; and I’ll take precious good care nobody else’s affections get blighted if I can help it." To which Mrs. Brooke-Hoskyn replied, "And well I understand your meaning, Ruth; for if Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn had n’t asked me to marry him, what I should ha’ done I don’t know." Whereupon the two ladies, for no obvious reason, wept together and were greatly comforted. It seems that Miss Barbara had years ago been more or less affianced to a Lieutenant in the Navy. Not a young lieutenant, an elderly lieutenant with several characteristics which were doubtful recommendations. But time had softened the image of the gallant tar in Miss Barbara’s recollection, and the more it receded, the more romantic it had become, until now she was, not so much in love with her recollections of him, as with what she could remember of the ideal she had set up in her own mind. In the flesh, Lieutenant Charles—no one had ever heard his surname—had been a very short, puffy man, with a completely bald head. His language was interlarded with expletives, suitable, perhaps, to intercourse with rough sailors in a gale, but devastating on shore in the company of ladies. Personally, I am not at all certain he had ever actually proposed to Miss Barbara. I don’t believe he knew how. The two ladies were living near the Docks at the time, with their father, who was something in linseed; and I have no doubt Lieutenant Charles found the old man’s Port-wine agreeable and liked to bask in Miss Barbara’s pretty smiles. For Miss Barbara was very pretty indeed; a bonny, plump little thing, by nature all mirth and laughter. She did not so much walk as hop like a little bird. She was altogether like a bird. Her father had always called her his dicky-bird. She kissed just as a bird pecks, and when she spoke or laughed, it was exactly like the twitter of birds settling down to sleep at sunset.