be
glad, overjoyed, to get fifteen hundred. And while I shall be grinding
away body and soul for my fifteen hundred, your fifteen thousand will
drop into your pockets, even if you keep your hands there all day. Don't
look so sad, Mary Ann. I'm not blaming you. It's not your fault in the
least. It's only one of the many jokes of existence. The only reason I
want to drive this into your head is to put you on your guard. Though I
don't think myself good enough to marry you, there are lots of men who
will think they are . . . though they don't know you. It is you, not me,
who are grand and rich, Mary Ann . . . beware of men like me--poor and
selfish. And when you do marry----"

"Oh, Mr. Lancelot!" cried Mary Ann, bursting into tears at last, "why do
you talk like that? You know I shall never marry anybody else."

"Hush, hush! Mary Ann! I thought you were going to be a good girl and
never cry again. Dry your eyes now, will you?"

"Yessir."

"Here, take my handkerchief."

"Yessir. . . but I won't marry anybody else."

"You make me smile, Mary Ann. When you brought your mother that cake for
Sally you didn't know a time would come when----"

"Oh, please, sir, I know that. But you said yesterday I was a young
woman now. And this is all different to that."

"No, it isn't, Mary Ann. When they've put you to school, and made you a
ward in Chancery, or something, and taught you airs and graces, and
dressed you up"--a pang traversed his heart, as the picture of her in the
future flashed for a moment upon his inner eye--"why, by that time,
you'll be a different Mary Ann, outside and inside. Don't shake your
head; I know better than you. We grow and become different. Life is
full of chances, and human beings are full of changes, and nothing
remains fixed."

"Then, perhaps"--she flushed up, her eyes sparkled--"perhaps"--she grew
dumb and sad again.

"Perhaps what?"

He waited for her thought. The rapturous trills of the canary alone
possessed the silence.

"Perhaps you'll change, too." She flashed a quick deprecatory glance at
him--her eyes were full of soft light.

This time he was dumb.

"Sw--eet!" trilled the canary, "Sw--eet!" though Lancelot felt the
throbbings of his heart must be drowning its song.

"Acutely answered," he said at last. "You're not such a fool after all,
Mary Ann. But I'm afraid it will never be, dear. Perhaps if I also made
two million dollars, and if I felt I had grow