"Now, Richard Dewy, no touching me! I didn't say in what way your
thinking of me affected the question--perhaps inversely, don't you see?
No touching, sir! Look; goodness me, don't, Dick!"

The cause of her sudden start was the unpleasant appearance over Dick's
right shoulder of an empty timber-wagon and four journeymen-carpenters
reclining in lazy postures inside it, their eyes directed upwards at
various oblique angles into the surrounding world, the chief object of
their existence being apparently to criticize to the very backbone and
marrow every animate object that came within the compass of their vision.
This difficulty of Dick's was overcome by trotting on till the wagon and
carpenters were beginning to look rather misty by reason of a film of
dust that accompanied their wagon-wheels, and rose around their heads
like a fog.

"Say you love me, Fancy."

"No, Dick, certainly not; 'tisn't time to do that yet."

"Why, Fancy?"

"'Miss Day' is better at present--don't mind my saying so; and I ought
not to have called you Dick."

"Nonsense! when you know that I would do anything on earth for your love.
Why, you make any one think that loving is a thing that can be done and
undone, and put on and put off at a mere whim."

"No, no, I don't," she said gently; "but there are things which tell me I
ought not to give way to much thinking about you, even if--"

"But you want to, don't you? Yes, say you do; it is best to be truthful.
Whatever they may say about a woman's right to conceal where her love
lies, and pretend it doesn't exist, and things like that, it is not best;
I do know it, Fancy. And an honest woman in that, as well as in all her
daily concerns, shines most brightly, and is thought most of in the long-
run."

"Well then, perhaps, Dick, I do love you a little," she whispered
tenderly; "but I wish you wouldn't say any more now."

"I won't say any more now, then, if you don't like it, dear. But you do
love me a little, don't you?"

"Now you ought not to want me to keep saying things twice; I can't say
any more now, and you must be content with what you have."

"I may at any rate call you Fancy? There's no harm in that."

"Yes, you may."

"And you'll not call me Mr. Dewy any more?"

"Very well."

CHAPTER II: FURTHER ALONG THE ROAD

Dick's spirits having risen in the course of these admissions of his
sweetheart, he now touched Smart with the whip; and on Smart's neck, not
far behind