"I want to marry," he said, hurriedly, and threw a further quantity of sweets to the children and turned more directly towards her. "I have been waiting so long for an opportunity of saying this to you that you will forgive me if I seem a little abrupt and choose my time inopportunely. I never see you alone now. You cannot have failed to observe how deeply in love I am. You are so sweet and gentle that I feel you will be kind. I want a little encouragement." He paused expectantly. "I may go on?" he asked, when she took no advantage of his hesitation. "You will give me a little hope?" Prudence turned her face and met his eyes fully. There was no possibility of mistaking his meaning. "No, please don't," she said. "I don't want you to say any more. I hoped you would see it wasn't any use. I'm sorry." The curate although a vain man, had never felt very confident of winning her. He wanted her quite urgently; but he was not so deeply in love with Prudence as he was with himself, and the certainty of defeat wounded his pride more than it wounded his feelings. He had no intention of giving her the satisfaction of being in a position to say that she had refused him. He dissembled meanly, congratulating himself on the clever ambiguity with which he had worded his proposal. "I am sorry you have formed that opinion," he said, trying to keep the chagrin he felt from betraying itself in his voice. "You are so much with her that I believed you would enjoy her entire confidence, and I was vain enough to expect a little encouragement. But I am not going to accept your opinion as final. I shall make my appeal to her. Perhaps I ought to have done so in the first instance; but a man feels naturally diffident at these times." The play of expression on Prudence's face while she listened to his stilted sentences was remarkable. He would have been very obtuse if he believed that he succeeded in deceiving her. It was very evident that she apprehended him very clearly. A little smile hovered about her mouth when she replied to him. "If it is Matilda you allude to," she said, with an ambiguity equal to his own, "I wish you all the success you deserve." He raised his hat gravely and left her, carrying the bag of sweets with him, to the manifest disgust of the staring infants; and Prudence, watching his hurrying little figure making its purposeful way through the different groups in search of his unconscious quarry, laughed quietly and without malice, despite his ungenerous effort to humiliate her. "Now I shall have a new enemy in my brother-in-law," she reflected. "He is marrying the chimneys. But Matilda will be too grateful to him to resent that."