‘It won’t do us any good with my mother,’ said Walter, with a thrill of dread coming over him, for he did not like to think of his mother and that terrible trustee. ‘By the way,’ cried Kitty, with a pirouette of delight, ‘it’s I that am Mrs. Lawrence now, and she’s only the Dowager. Fancy turning a person who has always made you shake in your shoes into the Dowager! It’s too delightful--it’s worth all the rest.’ Walter did not like this to be said about his mother. He had deceived and disappointed her, but he was not without a feeling for her. ‘That is all nonsense,’ he said. ‘It is not as if I had come into the property and my mother had to turn out; for everything is hers. I hope you don’t mind being Mrs. Walter, Kitty, for my sake.’ Kitty considered a moment whether she should be angry, but concluded that it was too soon after the last quarrel, and would be monotonous and a bore, so she caught up his hat instead and thrust it into his hand. ‘Come along,’ she said; ‘come along. We have sat a long time over breakfast, and there is no time to lose; I must make out the other name in that book.’ But here the young lady met with an unexpected check, for the blacksmith stopped them as they entered his house, striding towards them from the kitchen, where he, too, had finished a very satisfactory meal. ‘What will ye be wanting?’ he said. ‘Ye will maybe think I can unmarry ye again? but it’s not possible to do that.’ ‘We don’t want to be unmarried,’ said Kitty; ‘we want just to look at the book again, to see a name.’ ‘What book?’ ‘The register-book that is in that room,’ said Walter; ‘my wife,’ and he gave Kitty’s arm a squeeze, ‘saw a name----’ ‘My book!’ The blacksmith stood in the doorway like a mountain, not to be passed by or pushed aside. ‘I’ll have no one spying into the names in my book.’ ‘I don’t want to spy,’ said Kitty;’ it’s somebody I know.’ But the big man would hear no reason; he looked at the little couple before him, so young and so silly, as if he had been a bishop at least. ‘I couldn’t refuse to marry ye,’ he said; ‘I hadn’t the right. But if I had followed my own lights, I would just have sent ye home to your parents to be put back in the nursery; and ye shall see no books of mine, nor tell tales upon other folk.’ And nothing could move him from this resolution. Kitty nearly cried with vexation when they got into the train again; her own escapade dwindled into something quite secondary. ‘It was so silly of me not to make sure of the name. I am sure the first name was Everard, or something like that. And what a brute that man is, Walter! If you had really loved me as you say, you would have pushed him away or knocked him down.’ ‘Why, he was six times as big as me, Kitty!’ ‘What does that matter,’ she said, ‘when it’s for the sake of someone you love?’ But perhaps this is rather a feminine view.