Had she made a good match? Had she done very well for herself? Such a view of the case had never entered her head. She thought of what Charlie's prospects had been when she first knew him on that long ago visit to her grandmother. Who would have said then that Charlie was likely to be comfortably off? How well she remembered Gwyn Bailey's picnic, when Charlie had told her that the positions he had hoped for were closed to him, and that he had no money to enter a profession! She remembered the hopeless ring of his voice as he had said, "now there's nothing." No! she had not chosen Charlie for any such reason as Gertrude suggested. She was standing with her back to the scullery, and was quite unaware that behind the half closed door Pattie was quietly peeling potatoes, but her answer could scarcely have been different if she had known it. "I wish you would not talk so, Gertrude," she said. "Very likely," said Gertrude calmly, "people often do not care to hear what is nevertheless quite true. And I mean to be pretty well off when I get married, and not to have to scrape and think of every penny, and wonder whether you can afford a new dress just directly you want it. I think it's horrid, and I have always thought it horrid." "I don't," said Denys, "it seems to me that we have been as happy at home here as any family I know, even though we have had, as you call it, to scrape and think of pennies, and manage our clothes and work hard. I've liked it always and if I loved anyone I would not mind being poor. Mother did not marry anybody rich and _she_ is happy!" "Ah!" said Gertrude, "it is all very well for you to talk. You have Love _and_ Money. And that's what I mean to have! So I shall go to Whitecliff and get to know fresh people and see what turns up!" "What about----" began Denys, but she did not finish her sentence. She disliked putting names together, but her thoughts flew off to a Scotch town, where a boy with a merry face and dark twinkling eyes, was working his hardest as a bank-clerk. Reggie Alston had been Gertrude's chum since they were children, and he had never made any secret of the fact that Gertrude was the one girl in the world in his eyes. But Gertrude divined what Denys had meant to say, and with a light laugh she went away to wash her sticky hands. She was not going to have Reggie Alston thrown at her. Reggie was all very well and Reggie might mean Love, but Reggie would not mean Money. Turning to see what had become of Gertrude, Denys caught sight of Pattie's interested face. "I've got a young man, Miss Denys," she said importantly, "he's such a nice, steady young man, Miss, your Mr. Henchman just reminds me of him, and he's just as fond of me as anything, but"--her face fell--"he's not very well off, Miss, not at all, and--and--well! it's rather a pity, as Miss Gertrude's been saying, to marry poor."