"

"But, surely," exclaimed Ethelbertha, "you don't mean to say you're
breaking off the match because you don't like his sausages!"

"Well, I suppose that's what it comes to," agreed Amenda, unconcernedly.

"What an awful idea!" sighed poor Ethelbertha, after a long pause. "Do
you think you ever really loved him?"

"Oh yes," said Amenda, "I loved him right enough, but it's no good loving
a man that wants you to live on sausages that keep you awake all night."

"But does he want you to live on sausages?" persisted Ethelbertha.

"Oh, he doesn't say anything about it," explained Amenda; "but you know
what it is, mum, when you marry a pork butcher; you're expected to eat
what's left over. That's the mistake my poor cousin Eliza made. She
married a muffin man. Of course, what he didn't sell they had to finish
up themselves. Why, one winter, when he had a run of bad luck, they
lived for two months on nothing but muffins. I never saw a girl so
changed in all my life. One has to think of these things, you know."

But the most shamefully mercenary engagement that I think Amenda ever
entered into, was one with a 'bus conductor. We were living in the north
of London then, and she had a young man, a cheesemonger, who kept a shop
in Lupus Street, Chelsea. He could not come up to her because of the
shop, so once a week she used to go down to him. One did not ride ten
miles for a penny in those days, and she found the fare from Holloway to
Victoria and back a severe tax upon her purse. The same 'bus that took
her down at six brought her back at ten. During the first journey the
'bus conductor stared at Amenda; during the second he talked to her,
during the third he gave her a cocoanut, during the fourth he proposed to
her, and was promptly accepted. After that, Amenda was enabled to visit
her cheesemonger without expense.

He was a quaint character himself, this 'bus conductor. I often rode
with him to Fleet Street. He knew me quite well (I suppose Amenda must
have pointed me out to him), and would always ask me after her--aloud,
before all the other passengers, which was trying--and give me messages
to take back to her. Where women were concerned he had what is called "a
way" with him, and from the extent and variety of his female
acquaintance, and the evident tenderness with which the majority of them
regarded him, I am inclined to hope that Amenda's desertion of him (which
happened contemporaneously with her