n he was about in the great world, at
home and abroad. Without me to amuse him in the evening, and his clock
to occupy him in the daytime--"

"His clock?" repeated Allan.

"Oh, yes! I ought to have told you. Papa is an extraordinary mechanical
genius. You will say so, too, when you see his clock. It's nothing
like so large, of course, but it's on the model of the famous clock
at Strasbourg. Only think, he began it when I was eight years old; and
(though I was sixteen last birthday) it isn't finished yet! Some of our
friends were quite surprised he should take to such a thing when his
troubles began. But papa himself set that right in no time; he reminded
them that Louis the Sixteenth took to lock-making when _his_ troubles
began, and then everybody was perfectly satisfied." She stopped, and
changed color confusedly. "Oh, Mr. Armadale," she said, in genuine
embarrassment this time, "here is my unlucky tongue running away with me
again! I am talking to you already as if I had known you for years! This
is what papa's friend meant when he said my manners were too bold. It's
quite true; I have a dreadful way of getting familiar with people, if--"
She checked herself suddenly, on the brink of ending the sentence by
saying, "if I like them."

"No, no; do go on!" pleaded Allan. "It's a fault of mine to be familiar,
too. Besides, we _must_ be familiar; we are such near neighbors. I'm
rather an uncultivated sort of fellow, and I don't know quite how to say
it; but I want your cottage to be jolly and friendly with my house, and
my house to be jolly and friendly with your cottage. There's my meaning,
all in the wrong words. Do go on, Miss Milroy; pray go on!"

She smiled and hesitated. "I don't exactly remember where I was," she
replied, "I only remember I had something I wanted to tell you. This
comes, Mr. Armadale, of my taking your arm. I should get on so much
better, if you would only consent to walk separately. You won't? Well,
then, will you tell me what it was I wanted to say? Where was I before I
went wandering off to papa's troubles and papa's clock?"

"At school!" replied Allan, with a prodigious effort of memory.

"_Not_ at school, you mean," said Miss Milroy; "and all through _you_.
Now I can go on again, which is a great comfort. I am quite serious, Mr.
Armadale, in saying that I should have been sent to school, if you had
said No when papa proposed for the cottage. This is how it happened.
When we began moving i