one for tongue-wagging, you’ll have found that for yourself. For all I could ha’ sworn to there might never have been talk o’ weddin’ betwixt ’em at all; but they’d been together a deal, an’--an’--why, I’d seen Lup’s eyes on her acrost table, an’ I’d be like to know, I reckon, when a Whinnerah’s set on a lass! So after a bit o’ coughing and fidging, thinking she was happen likely just joking us, I got out as we’d always taken it as she and Lup was sweethearts. “‘Happen we be!’ says she, only in quality-talk, and she gives Lup the sweetest little look sideways as set him shining like the Angel Gabriel! “‘Why, then, what there’s nowt to find!’ says I, trying not to get above myself. ‘If you’re courtin’, you’re likely thinking to get wed, and now’s your time. What’s to hinder? The farm’s ready, and the lad.’ “‘Ay, but not the lass!’ says she, spirity-like. ‘The right time’s my own time, and I’ll come when I choose!’ “‘You’ll come when Lup chooses!’ I said, fair lossing my temper out an’ out. ‘Tell her that, my lad. Tell her she’ll come when she’s fetched!’ “But Lup just sat there like a half-rocked ’un, glowering at nowt an’ saying less, as he did just now, and then my lady gets on her feet and has her talk out. “‘You mean kindly,’ she says, ‘and to be fair and just, but you don’t understand how it looks to me. It’s the way things are worked, I know. A lad slaves for his father for years after he’s a man grown, with never so much as a penny to put between his teeth, and at last, when the old man’s tired, he gives his son his chance. Round comes the agent, and it’s, “You’re for getting wed, I reckon? Right!” (if it _is_ right), and the contract’s made. The lass goes into the contract along with the farm, and along at the beck of the three men to the church. Well, that’s your way, but it’s not mine, and you may as well know it first as last. I’ll come when I’m ready, or I’ll never come at all!’ “And with that she took herself off, an’ after a minute Lup up an’ followed her. He didn’t come home while morning--I’ve an idea he spent the night on the sea-wall--and after that it was Canada. Ay, an’ Canada it’ll be, sir, and no two words about it!” He stopped, exhausted, and Lancaster laughed. “Why, man, you’re worrying yourself for nothing! It’s a lovers’ quarrel--no more. I thought, by the look of you, there was murder in the wind! Come, there’s no sense in whistling up your own ill-luck. The girl will be round again at the swing of the pendulum by this time to-morrow. She’ll pull up to the pole all right, you take my word!” The old man shook a dogged contradiction. “You’ve seen Lup,” he said. “You know how far there’s bending _him_. Have you seen the lass, sir? Nay? What, then----” on a sudden, cheering impulse--“see here, sir, suppose _you_ put in a word?”