"Oh, Peter!" said she, with a sigh of resignation, "you possess absolutely no idea of proportion. Here we pay four shillings for meat, and only eightpence for bread; had we spent less on luxuries and more on necessaries we should have had money in hand instead of—let me see!" and she began adding up the various items before her with soft, quick little pats of her fingers on the table. Presently, having found the total, she leaned back in her chair and, summoning my attention with a tap of her pen, announced: "We have spent nine shillings and tenpence, Peter!" "Good, indeed!" said I. "Leaving exactly—twopence over." "A penny for you, and a penny for me." "I fear I am a very bad housekeeper, Peter." "On the contrary." "You earn ten shillings a week." "Well?" "And here is exactly—twopence left—oh, Peter!" "You are forgetting the tea and the beef, and—and the other luxuries," said I, struck by the droop of her mouth. "But you work so very, very hard, and earn so little and that little—" "I work that I may live, Charmian, and lo! I am alive." "And dreadfully poor!" "And ridiculously happy." "I wonder why?" said she, beginning to draw designs on the page before her. "Indeed, though I have asked myself that question frequently of late, I have as yet found no answer, unless it be my busy, care-free life, with the warm sun about me and the voice of the wind in the trees." "Yes, perhaps that is it." "And yet I don't know," I went on thoughtfully, "for now I come to think of it, my life has always been busy and care-free, and I have always loved the sun and the sound of wind in trees—yet, like Horace, have asked 'What is Happiness?' and looked for it in vain; and now, here—in this out-of-the-world spot, working as a village smith, it has come to me all unbidden and unsought—which is very strange!" "Yes, Peter," said Charmian, still busy with her pen. "Upon consideration I think my thanks are due to my uncle for dying and leaving me penniless." "Do you mean that he disinherited you?" "In a way, yes; he left me his whole fortune provided that I married a certain lady within the year." "A certain lady?" "The Lady Sophia Sefton, of Cambourne," said I. Charmian's pen stopped in the very middle of a letter, and she bent down to examine what she had been writing. "Oh!" said she very softly, "the Lady Sophia Sefton of Cambourne?" "Yes," said I. "And—your cousin—Sir Maurice—were the conditions the same in his case?" "Precisely!" "Oh!" said Charmian, just as softly as before, "and this lady—she will not—marry you?" "No," I answered. "Are you quite—sure?" "Certain!—you see, I never intend to ask her." Charmian suddenly raised her head and looked at me, "Why not, Peter?"