d nothing else--and then out of hearing. That sort o' chaff's cowardly.
Boys are stiff young parties--circulation--and I don't tackle them pretty
often, 'xcept when I'm going like a ball among nine-pins. It's all a
matter o' circulation. I say, my dear," Anthony addressed her seriously,
"you should never lay hold o' my arm when you see me going my pace of an
afternoon. I took you for a thief, and worse--I did. That I did. Had you
been waiting to see me?"

"A little," Dahlia replied, breathless.

"You have been ill?"

"A little," she said.

"You've written to the farm? O' course you have!"

"Oh! uncle, wait," moaned Dahlia.

"But, ha' you been sick, and not written home?"

"Wait; please, wait," she entreated him.

"I'll wait," said Anthony; "but that's no improvement to queerness; and
'queer''s your motto. Now we cross London Bridge. There's the Tower that
lived in times when no man was safe of keeping his own money, 'cause of
grasping kings--all claws and crown. I'm Republican as far as 'none o'
them'--goes. There's the ships. The sun rises behind 'em, and sets afore
'em, and you may fancy, if you like, there's always gold in their
rigging. Gals o' your sort think I say, come! tell me, if you are a
lady?"

"No, uncle, no!" Dahlia cried, and then drawing in her breath, added:
"not to you."

"Last time I crossed this bridge with a young woman hanging on my arm, it
was your sister; they say she called on you, and you wouldn't see her;
and a gal so good and a gal so true ain't to be got for a sister every
day in the year! What are you pulling me for?"

Dahlia said nothing, but clung to him with a drooping head, and so they
hurried along, until Anthony stopped in front of a shop displaying cups
and muffins at the window, and leprous-looking strips of bacon, and
sausages that had angled for appetites till they had become pallid sodden
things, like washed-out bait.

Into this shop he led her, and they took possession of a compartment, and
ordered tea and muffins.

The shop was empty.

"It's one of the expenses of relationship," Anthony sighed, after probing
Dahlia unsatisfactorily to see whether she intended to pay for both, or
at least for herself; and finding that she had no pride at all. "My
sister marries your father, and, in consequence--well! a muffin now and
then ain't so very much. We'll forget it, though it is a breach, mind, in
counting up afterwards, and two-pences every day's equal to a good big