"'Let bygones be bygones. Why shouldn't we make a match of it?'" I echoed. "Jones is right." I tightened my grasp of her hand and drew her towards me, almost without resistance. "You're going to lose your companion, you'll want another." Her lovely face came nearer and nearer. "Besides," I said gaily, "I understand you're out of an engagement." "Thanks," she said; "I don't care for an engagement in the Provinces, and I have sworn never to marry in the profession: they're a bad lot." "Call me an actor?" My lips were almost on hers. "You played Lord Dundreary--not unforgivably." Our lips met! "Oh, Augustus," came the voice of Mrs. Windpeg, "I feel so faint with happiness!" "Loose your arms a moment, my popsy. I'll fetch you a drop of Damtidam!" answered the voice of Jones. _The Principal Boy._ I. To sit out a play is a bore; to sit out a dance demands less patience. Even when you do it merely to prevent your partner dancing with you, it is the less disagreeable alternative. But it sometimes makes you giddier than galoping. Frank Redhill lost his head--a well-built head--completely through indulging in it; and without the head to look after it, the heart soon goes. He held Lucy's little hand in his hot clasp. She wished he would get himself gloves large enough not to split at the thumbs, and felt quite affectionate towards the dear, untidy boy. As a woman almost out of her teens, she could permit herself a motherly feeling for a lad who had but just attained his majority. The little thing looked very sweet in a demure dress of nun's veiling, which Frank would have described as "white robes." For he was only an undergraduate. Some undergraduates are past masters in the science and art of woman; but Frank was not in that set. Nor did he herd with the athletic, who drift mainly into the unpaid magistracy, nor with the worldly, who usually go in for the church. He was a reading man. Only he did not stick to the curriculum, but fed himself on the conceits of the poets, and thirsted to redeem mankind. So he got a second-class. But this is anticipating. Perhaps Lucy had been anticipating, too. At any rate she went through the scene as admirably as if she had rehearsed for it. And yet it was presumably the first time she had been asked to say: "I love you"--that wonderful little phrase, so easy to say and so hard to believe. Still, Lucy said and Frank believed it.