“And she thought you better worth looking at than the bride--and quite right, too!” Amelius rejoined. “Come, come, Sally, be like yourself. You don’t want to make me unhappy about you, I am sure?” He had taken the right way with her: she felt that simple appeal, and asked his pardon with all the old charm in her manner and her voice. For the moment, she was “Simple Sally” again. They walked on in silence. When they had lost sight of the church, Amelius felt her hand beginning to tremble on his arm. A mingled expression of tenderness and anxiety showed itself in her blue eyes as they looked up at him. “I am thinking of something else now,” she said; “I am thinking of You. May I ask you something?” Amelius smiled. The smile was not reflected as usual in Sally’s face. “It’s nothing particular,” she explained in an odd hurried way; “the church put it into my head. You--” She hesitated, and tried it under another form. “Will you be married yourself, Amelius, one of these days?” He did his best to evade the question. “I am not rich, Sally, like the old gentleman we have just seen.” Her eyes turned away from him; she sighed softly to herself. “You will be married some day,” she said. “Will you do one kind thing more for me, Amelius, when I die? You remember my reading in the newspaper of the new invention for burning the dead--and my asking you about it. You said you thought it was better than burying, and you had a good mind to leave directions to be burnt instead of buried, when your time came. When _my_ time has come, will you leave other directions about yourself, if I ask you?” “My dear, you are talking in a very strange way! If you will have it that I am to be married some day, what has that to do with your death?” “It doesn’t matter, Amelius. When I have nothing left to live for, I suppose it’s as likely as not I may die. Will you tell them to bury me in some quiet place, away from London, where there are very few graves? And when you leave your directions, don’t say you are to be burnt. Say--when you have lived a long, long life, and enjoyed all the happiness you have deserved so well--say you are to be buried, and your grave is to be near mine. I should like to think of the same trees shading us, and the same flowers growing over us. No! don’t tell me I’m talking strangely again--I can’t bear it; I want you to humour me and be kind to me about this. Do you mind going home? I’m feeling a little tired--and I know I’m poor company for you today.” The talk flagged at dinner-time, though Toff did his best to keep it going.