"You are really fond of this work?" asked Will. "You would be sorry to give it up?" "Think of the world's loss," Bertha answered with raised eyebrows. He sat down and kept a short silence, whilst the girl resumed her pencil. "There were things I ought to have told you on Sunday." Will's voice threatened huskiness. "Things I forgot. That's why I have come again so soon. I ought to have told you much more about myself. How can you know my character--my peculiarities--faults? I've been going over all that. I don't think I'm ill-tempered, or unjust or violent, but there are things that irritate me. Unpunctuality for instance. Dinner ten minutes late makes me fume; failure to keep an appointment makes me hate a person; I'm rather a grumbler about food; can't stand a potato ill-boiled or an under-done chop. Then--ah yes! restraint is intolerable to me. I must come and go at my own will. I must do and refrain just as I think fit. One enormous advantage of my shopkeeping is that I'm my own master. I can't subordinate myself, won't be ruled. Fault-finding would exasperate me; dictation would madden me. Then yes, the money matter. I'm not extravagant, but I hate parsimony. If it pleases me to give away a sovereign I must be free to do it. Then--yes, I'm not very tidy in my habits; I have no respect for furniture; I like, when it's comfortable, to sit with my boots on the fender; and--I loathe antimacassars." In the room were two or three of these articles, dear to Mrs. Cross. Bertha glanced at them, then bent her head and bit the end of her pencil. "You can't think of anything else?" she asked, when Will had been silent for a few seconds. "Those are my most serious points." He rose. "I only came to tell you of them, that you might add them to the objection of the shop." Bertha also rose. He moved toward her to take leave. "You will think?" Turning half way, Bertha covered her face with her hands, like a child who is bidden "not to look." So she stood for a moment; then, facing Will again, said: "I have thought." "And--?" "There is only one thing I am sorry for--that you are nothing worse than a grocer. A grocer's is such a clean, dainty, aromatic trade. Now if you kept an oil shop--there would be some credit in overlooking it. And you are so little even of a grocer, that I should constantly forget it. I should think of you simply as a very honest man--the most honest man I ever knew." Warburton's face glowed. "Should--should?" he murmured. "Can't it be _shall_?" And Bertha, smiling now without a touch of roguishness, smiling in the mere joy of her heart, laid a hand in his. CHAPTER 47