Those words "safe and snug," telling of a prospect that at that moment seemed of all others the most desirable in the world, dwelt so lovingly on my ear, that in place of hesitation I felt only eagerness and haste. "I will go!" I said. "You will?" she said. "Yes," I answered. "And----" "And what?" I said, wondering. She hesitated a moment, and then, "That is for you to say," she replied, lowering her eyes. It is possible that I might not have understood her, even then, if I had not marked her face, and seen that her lips were quivering with a sudden shyness, which words and manner in vain belied. She blushed, and trembled; and, lowering her eyes, drew forward the shawl that covered her head, the street-urchin gone out of her. And I, seeing and understanding, had other and new thoughts of her which remained with me. "If you mean that," I said, clumsily, "I will make you my wife--if you will let me." "Well, we'll see about it, when we get to Romford," she answered, looking nervously aside, and plucking at the fringe of the shawl. "We have to escape first. And now--listen," she continued, rapidly, and in her ordinary voice. "My uncle is removing to-morrow to another hiding-place, and I go first with some clothes and baggage. He will not flit himself till it is dark. Do you put your trunk outside your door, and I will take it and send it by the Chelmsford waggon. At noon meet me at Clerkenwell Gate, and we will walk to Romford and hide there until we know how things are going." "Why Romford?" I said. "Why anywhere?" she answered, impatiently. That was true enough; and seeing in what mood she was, and that out of sheer contrariness she was inclined to be the more shrewish now, because she had melted to me a moment before, I refrained from asking farther questions; listening instead to her minute directions, which were given with as much clearness and perspicuity as if she had dwelt on this escape for a twelvemonth past. It was plain, indeed, that she had not fetched and carried for the famous Ferguson for nothing; nor watched his methods to little purpose. Nor was this all: mingled with this display of precocious skill there constantly appeared a touch of malice and mischief, more natural in a boy than a girl, and seldom found even in boys, where the gutter has not served for a school. And through this again, as through the folds of a shifting gauze, appeared that which gradually and as I listened took more and more a hold on me--the woman. Yet I suppose that there never was a stranger love-making in the world; if love-making that could be called wherein one at least of us had in mind ten thoughts of fear and death for one of happiness or love; and a pulse attuned rather to the dreary drip of the wet eaves about us, and the monotonous yelp of a cur chained among the stalls, than to the flutter of desire.