"Kitty dear," cried Mrs. Esther in alarm, "what does this gentleman mean?" "I do not know, dear madam. Pray, Will, if you can, explain what you mean?" "Explain? explain? Why----" here he swore again, but I will not write down his profane and wicked language. Suffice it to say that he called heaven and earth to witness his astonishment. "Why, you mean to look me in the face and tell me you don't know?" "We are old friends, Will," I said, "and I should like, for Nancy's sake, and because Lady Levett has been almost a mother to me, out of her extreme kindness, that we should remain friends. But when a gentleman salutes me before a company of gentlemen and ladies as his sweetheart, when he talks of fighting other gentlemen--like a rustic on a village green----" "Wouldst have me fight with swords and likely as not get killed, then?" he asked. "When he assumes these rights over me, I can ask, I think, for an explanation." "Certainly," said Mrs. Esther. "We are grieved, sir, to have even a moment's disagreement with the son of so honourable a gentleman and so gracious a lady as your respected father and worthy mother, but you will acknowledge that your behaviour on the Downs was startling to a young woman of such strict propriety as my dear Kitty." He looked from one to the other as if in a dream. Then he put his hand into his pocket and dragged out the half sixpence. "What's that?" he asked me furiously. "A broken sixpence, Will," I replied. "Where is the other half?" "Perhaps where it was left, on the table in the parlour of the Vicarage." "What!" he cried; "do you mean to say that you didn't break the sixpence with me?" "Do you mean to say, Will, that I did? As for you breaking it, I do not deny that: I remember that you snapped it between your fingers without asking me anything about it; but to say that I broke it, or assented to your breaking it, or carried away the other half--Fie, Will, fie!" "This wench," he said, "is enough to drive a man mad. Yet, for all your fine clothes and your paint and powder, Mistress Kitty, I've promised to marry you. And marry you I will. Put that in your pipe, now." "Marry me against my consent, Will? That can hardly be." "Is it possible," cried Mrs. Esther, seriously displeased, "that we have in this rude and discourteous person a son of Sir Robert Levett?" "I never was crossed by woman or man or puppy yet," cried Will doggedly, and taking no notice whatever of Mrs. Esther's rebuke; "and I never will be! Why, for a whole year and more I've been making preparations for it. I've broke in the colt out of Rosamund by Samson and called him Kit, for you to ride. I've told the people round, so as anybody knows there's no pride in me, that I'm going to marry a parson's girl, without a farden, thof a baronet to be----" Will easily dropped into rustic language, where I do not always follow him.