"Dear Bob! why not?" "Because I don't see why I should," he answers, frankly. "I'm perfectly well: why should I shirk work any more than any other fellow? I might say that I prefer a cool climate to a hot vapour-bath, English winds to oily calms, but I don't suppose that I am singular in that!" "My dear boy!" says the old woman, tremulously, stretching out her withered hand across the table to him,--"why did you ever go into that dreadful profession? Why did not you enter the ministry, like your dear father, as I so much wished you to do?" "I'm very glad I didn't, mother!" replies the young man, bluntly; "I should have been a fish sadly out of water, and, after all, I hope that Heaven will not be quite so full of black coats that there will not be room for one or two of our colour." "Have you told Essie?" inquires his eldest sister, joining in the conversation. "Yes, she knows." "Will she be ready to go with you on such short notice?" "No." "You'll leave her behind, then?" "Yes." "I thought you always had such a horror of long engagements?" "So I have, but--but" (involuntarily lowering his voice, and lifting "Thou Fool!" to be a partial shade for his face)--"there is no engagement between us now!" Six startled eyes fix themselves upon his face. "What!" cry three simultaneously shrill female voices. "No engagement! Has she thrown you over?" "No." "Have _you_ thrown _her_ over?" (with an astonished emphasis on the pronouns). "No." "Have you quarrelled, then?" "No, we haven't," answers Bob, wincing. "Poor little child! one would hardly choose such a time as this to quarrel with her. Cannot you understand two people coming to the conclusion that they are better apart; better as friends than as--as anything else?" His three comforters stare at one another in bewilderment; then his parent speaks, shaking her head oracularly: "I'm afraid I see how it is, Bob; you have found out that this unfortunate girl is, in some way, unworthy of you, and you are too generous to confess it, even to us." Bob dashes down "Thou Fool!" in a fury, and his blue eyes shine with quick fire. "Mother, do you call that the 'charity that thinketh no evil?' I tell you, Essie is willing to marry me to-morrow, but I--" "But you are _not_ willing!" interrupts the domestic pack, bursting again into full cry. "Tell us something a _little_ more probable, Bob, and we'll try and believe it," subjoins Bessy, with a small curling smile. "It is a matter of perfect indifference to me whether you believe me or not," replies the young man, sternly; keeping under, with great difficulty, an unmanly longing to box Miss Bessy's ears. "I only tell you, _upon my honour_, that Essie is willing to marry me, and that I--solely for her own sake, solely because I know that an inferior being cannot make a superior one happy--am _not_ willing."