To make love to little Winny and to marry her, if (and that was not by any means so certain) she would have him--no idea could well have agitated Ranny more. It blunted the fine razorlike edge of his appetite for Sunday supper. It obscured his interest in _The Pink 'Un_, which he had unearthed from under the sofa cushion in the back parlor, whither he had withdrawn himself to think of it. And thinking of it took away the best part of his Sunday night's sleep. For, after all, it was impossible; and the more you thought of it the more impossible it was. He couldn't marry. He simply couldn't afford it on a salary of eight pounds a month, which was a little under a hundred a year. He couldn't even afford it on his rise. Fellows did. But he considered it was a beastly shame of them; yes, a beastly shame it was to go and tie a girl to you when you couldn't keep her properly, to say nothing of letting her in for having kids you couldn't keep at all. Ranny had very fixed and firm opinions about marrying; for he had seen fellows doing it, rushing bald-headed into this tremendous business, for no reason but that they had got so gone on some girl they couldn't stick it without her. Ranny, in his decency, considered that that wasn't a reason; that they ought to stick it; that they ought to think of the girl, and that of all the beastly things you could do to her, this was the beastliest, because it tied her. He had more than ever decided that it was so, as he lay in his attic sleepless on his narrow iron bedstead, staring up at the steep slope of the white-washed ceiling that leaned over him, pressed on him, and threatened him; watching it glimmer and darken and glimmer again to the dawn. He had put away from him the almost tangible vision of Winny lying there, pretty as she would be, in her little white nightgown, and her hair tossed over his pillow, perhaps, and he vowed that for Winny's sake he would never do that thing. As for the feeling he had unmistakably begun to have for Winny, he would have to put that away, too, until he could afford to produce it. It might also be wiser, for his own sake, to give up seeing her until he could afford it; but to this pitch of abnegation Ranny, for all his decency, couldn't rise. Besides, he had to see her. He had to see her home. * * * * *