little.

"Dick, Dick, kiss me and let me go instantly!--here's somebody coming!"
she whisperingly exclaimed.

* * *

Half an hour afterwards Dick emerged from the inn, and if Fancy's lips
had been real cherries probably Dick's would have appeared deeply
stained. The landlord was standing in the yard.

"Heu-heu! hay-hay, Master Dewy! Ho-ho!" he laughed, letting the laugh
slip out gently and by degrees that it might make little noise in its
exit, and smiting Dick under the fifth rib at the same time. "This will
never do, upon my life, Master Dewy! calling for tay for a feymel
passenger, and then going in and sitting down and having some too, and
biding such a fine long time!"

"But surely you know?" said Dick, with great apparent surprise. "Yes,
yes! Ha-ha!" smiting the landlord under the ribs in return.

"Why, what? Yes, yes; ha-ha!"

"You know, of course!"

"Yes, of course! But--that is--I don't."

"Why about--between that young lady and me?" nodding to the window of the
room that Fancy occupied.

"No; not I!" said the innkeeper, bringing his eyes into circles.

"And you don't!"

"Not a word, I'll take my oath!"

"But you laughed when I laughed."

"Ay, that was me sympathy; so did you when I laughed!"

"Really, you don't know? Goodness--not knowing that!"

"I'll take my oath I don't!"

"O yes," said Dick, with frigid rhetoric of pitying astonishment, "we're
engaged to be married, you see, and I naturally look after her."

"Of course, of course! I didn't know that, and I hope ye'll excuse any
little freedom of mine, Mr. Dewy. But it is a very odd thing; I was
talking to your father very intimate about family matters only last
Friday in the world, and who should come in but Keeper Day, and we all
then fell a-talking o' family matters; but neither one o' them said a
mortal word about it; knowen me too so many years, and I at your father's
own wedding. 'Tisn't what I should have expected from an old neighbour!"

"Well, to say the truth, we hadn't told father of the engagement at that
time; in fact, 'twasn't settled."

"Ah! the business was done Sunday. Yes, yes, Sunday's the courting day.
Heu-heu!"

"No, 'twasn't done Sunday in particular."

"After school-hours this week? Well, a very good time, a very proper
good time."

"O no, 'twasn't done then."

"Coming along the road to-day then, I suppose?"

"Not at all; I wouldn't think of getting engaged in a dog-cart."

"Dammy--migh