"Not so much as you think for, my little woman. So come, promise me. I know you won't break your word if you do promise." "No, Dick, never," she said, earnestly; and if there had been any true love in the young fellow's breast he would have been touched by the trusting, earnest reliance upon him that shone from her eyes as she looked up affectionately in his face. "Then promise me, Daisy, dear," he whispered; "it is for the good of both of us, and--Hang it all, there's Slee." Daisy was sent off as we know, and the tears fell fast as she hastened home, feeling that love was very sweet, but that its roses had thorns that rankled and stung. "Oh, Dick, Dick," she sobbed as she went on, "I wish sometimes that I'd never seen you, for it is so hard not to do whatever you wish." She dried her eyes hastily as she neared home, and drew her breath a little more hardly as about a hundred yards from the gate she saw Tom Podmore, who looked at her firmly and steadily as they passed, and hardly responded to her nod. "He knows where I've been. He knows where I've been," whispered Daisy to herself as she hurried on; and she was quite right, for her conscious cheeks hoisted a couple of signal flags of the ruddiest hue--signals that poor Tom could read as well as if they had been written down in a code, and he ground his teeth as he turned and watched her. "She's such a good girl that any one might troost her," he muttered, as he saw her go in at the gate, "or else I'd go and tell Joe all as I knows. But no, I couldn't do that, for it would hurt her, just as it would if I was to half kill Dick Glaire. She'll find him out some day perhaps--not as it matters to me though, for it's all over now." He walked back, looking over the green fence as he passed, and Mrs Banks waved her hand to him from the window; but his eyes were too much occupied by the sight of Daisy leaning over her father, and he walked on so hurriedly that he nearly blundered up against a great stalwart figure coming the other way. Volume 1, Chapter XVI. THE VICAR'S FRIENDS. "What cheer, owd Tommy?" cried the stalwart figure, pulling a short black pipe out of his mouth. "Hallo, Harry," said Tom, quietly, at least as quietly as he could, for the words were jerked out of his mouth by the tremendous clap on the shoulder administered by the big hammerman. "What's going to be done, Tommy?" growled the great fellow. "I'm 'bout tired o' this. I wants to hit something." He stretched out his great sinewy arm, and then drawing it back, let it fly again with such force that a man would have gone down before it like a cork. "Come along," said Tom, who wished to get away from the neighbourhood of Banks's cottage for fear Mrs Banks should call to him. Harry was a man whose brain detested originality. He was a machine who liked to be set in motion, so he followed Tom like a huge dog, and without a word.