He watched her timidly, with courage oozing out of him. She had all but given him to hope, but now it appeared she had no more to say. “Well, I can understand,” he said, half turning towards the door. “I’m not much of a chap, and you might easily have put me down much harder than you did. It’s soft letting now, by reason of your tactful ways. I’ll... I’ll go and see if Mrs. Whitehead has given me yon other blanket.” He was at the door before she stopped him. “George!” she said, “come back. You’re getting this all wrong. You know about my brother.” George nearly smiled. “It’ud not be your mother’s fault if I didn’t,” he said. “No,” she said; “I suppose everybody knows about his going to the Grammar School. They don’t all know what it means.” Madge was trying to be loyal to the family ideal, she was trying not to be bitter, but it wasn’t easy. It was one thing to go without new hats and the accustomed ways of service, but another to go without George. “I’d like you to understand that this family puts itself about a bit for Sam’s sake. We think he’ll go a long way up in the world, and the rest of us aren’t doing anything to keep him down. None of us, no matter how it hurts. Are you seeing what I mean?” He saw. “I’m not class enough for you,” he said. It was a part, but not the whole, of her meaning, and Madge wanted no misapprehensions. “You’re class enough for me,” she said, “but I’m telling you where the doubt comes in. It’s a habit we’ve got in this family. We think of Sam.” That made the matter plain; she loved him, and while he granted there was a certain impediment through Anne’s habit of subordinating everything to Sam’s interests, he saw no just cause why he should not marry Madge. “I wouldn’t knowingly do anything to upset your mother,” he said, “but I’ve told you I’m boiling with my love for you. I’m easily put off my purpose as a rule. I mean to say, supposing I ask Mrs. Whitehead for a kipper for my tea, and she tells me eggs are cheap and she’s got an egg instead, I don’t make a song about it--so long as the egg’s not extra stale. But I’ll own I didn’t think of Sam in this. I thought it was for you and me to settle by ourselves.” “Sam’s in it,” said Madge dully. “He’s in everything in this house.” Then Anne came in and the disturbance of her entrance, together with the fact that he had finished his passage of “_De Senectute_” made Sam aware that something was toward. He kept his eyes discreetly on his book, but fluttered the pages of his dictionary no more. He found youth more arresting than old age.