She walked with him direct up to the gate leading up to their own
house,--so that all the world might see her, if all the world
pleased; and then she bade him good-bye. "Some day before very long,
no doubt," she said when, as he left her, he asked as to their next
meeting.

And so Polly had engaged herself. I do not know that the matter
seemed to her to be of so much importance as it does to many girls.
It was a piece of business which had to be done some day, as she had
well known for years past; and now that it was done, she was quite
contented with the doing of it. But there was not much of that
ecstasy in her bosom which was at the present moment sending Ontario
Moggs bounding up to town, talking, as he went, to himself,--to the
amazement of passers by, and assuring himself that he had triumphed
like an Alexander or a Caesar. She made some steady resolves to do her
duty by him, and told herself again and again that nothing should
ever move her now that she had decided. As for beauty in a man;--what
did it signify? He was honest. As for awkwardness;--what did it
matter? He was clever. And in regard to being a gentleman; she rather
thought that she liked him better because he wasn't exactly what some
people call a gentleman. Whatever sort of a home he would give her
to live in, nobody would despise her in it because she was not grand
enough for her place. She was by no means sure that a good deal of
misery of that kind might not have fallen to her lot had she become
the mistress of Newton Priory. "When the beggar woman became a queen,
how the servants must have snubbed her," said Polly to herself.

That evening she showed her letter to her father. "You haven't sent
it, you minx?" said he.

"Yes, father. It's in the iron box."

"What business had you to write to a young man?"

"Come, father. I had a business."

"I believe you want to break my heart," said old Neefit.

That evening her mother asked her what she had been doing that
afternoon. "I just took a walk with Ontario Moggs," said Polly.

"Well?"

"And I've just engaged myself straight off, and you had better tell
father. I mean to keep to it, mother, let anybody say anything. I
wouldn't go back from my promise if they were to drag me. So father
may as well know at once."

CHAPTER XLIX.

AMONG THE PICTURES.

Norfolk is a county by no means devoted to hunting, and Ralph
Newton,--the disinherited Ralph as we may call him,--had been
advised