"Well, after this you will have to find someone else," I cried, warming again. "Ah, if you would keep your word!" she cried in a different tone, clapping her hands softly, and peering at me. "If you would keep your word." Seeing more clearly than ever that she would be at something, and wishing to know what it was, "Try me," I said. "What do you mean?" "It is plain," she answered, "what I mean. Carry no more messages! Be sneak and spy no longer! Cease to put your head in a noose to serve rogues' ends! Have done, man, with cringing and fawning, and trembling at big words. Break off with these villains who hold you, put a hundred miles between you and them, and be yourself! Be a man!" "Why, do you mean your uncle?" I cried, vastly surprised. "Why not?" she said. "But--if you feel that way, why do his bidding yourself?" I answered, doubting all this might be a trap of that cunning devil's. "If I sneak and spy, who spies on me, miss?" "I do," she said, leaning against the wall of Bedford Garden, where one of Heming's new lights, set up at the next corner, shone full on her face. "And I am weary of it." "But if you are weary of it----" "If I am weary of it, why don't I free myself instead of preaching to you?" she answered. "First, because I am a woman, Mr. Wiseman." "I don't see what that has to do with it," I retorted. "Don't you?" she answered bitterly. "Then I will tell you. My uncle feeds me, clothes me, gives me a roof--and sometimes beats me. If I run away as I bid you run away, where shall I find board and lodging, or anything but the beating? A man comes and goes; a woman, if she has not someone to answer for her, must to the Justice and then to the Round-house and be set to beating hemp; and her shoulders smarting to boot. Can I get service without a character?" "No," I said, "that is true." "Or travel without money?" "No." "Or alone--except to Whetstone Park?" "No." "Well, it is fine to be a man then," she answered, leaning her little shawled head farther and farther back against the wall, and slowly moving it to and fro, while she looked at me from under her eyelashes, "for he can do all. And take a woman with him." I started at that, and stared at her, and saw a little colour come into her pale face. But her eyes, far from falling under my gaze, met my eyes with a bold, mischievous look; that gradually, and as she still moved her head to and fro, melted into a smile. It was impossible to mistake her meaning, and I felt a thrill run through me, such as I had not known for ten years. "Oh," I said at last, and awkwardly, "I see now." "You would have seen long ago if you had not been a fool," she answered. And then, as if to excuse herself she added--but this I did not understand--"Not that fine feathers make fine birds--I am not such a fool myself, as to think that. But----" "But what?" I said, my face warm. "I am a fool all the same."