felt, in all its importance,
the momentous character of the step he was about to take, and he felt in
all its strength the love with which his heart was full, and the
inestimable value of the prize at which he aimed. No wonder that he was
overwhelmed.

The reader will observe that we have not attempted to dilate in this
book on the value of that prize. Emma, like many other good people, is
only incidental to our subject. We have been obliged to leave her to
the reader's imagination. After all, what better could we have done?
Imagination is more powerful in this matter than description. Neither
one nor other could, we felt, approach the reality, therefore
imagination was best.

"Emma!" he said, sitting down on the sofa beside her, and seizing her
hand in both of his.

"Mr Gurwood!" she exclaimed in some alarm.

Beginning, from the mere force of habit, some half-delirious reference
to the weather, Edwin suddenly stopped, passed his fingers wildly
through his hair, and again said, with deep earnestness,--"Emma."

Emma looked down, blushed, and said nothing.

"Emma," he said again, "my good angel, my guiding-star--by night and by
day--for years I have--"

At that moment Captain Lee entered the room.

Edwin leaped up and stood erect. Emma buried her face in the sofa
cushions.

"Edwin--Mr Gurwood!" exclaimed Captain Lee.

This was the beginning of a conversation which terminated eventually in
the transference of the nut-brown hair and lustrous eyes to the artist's
villa in Clatterby. As there was a good garden round the villa, and the
wife with nut-brown hair was uncommonly fond of flowers, Edwin looked
out for a gardener. It was at this identical time that John Marrot
resolved to resign his situation as engine-driver on the Grand National
Trunk Railway. Edwin, knowing that he had imbibed a considerable amount
of knowledge of gardening from Loo, at once offered to employ him as his
gardener; John gladly closed with the offer, and thus it came about that
he and his wife removed to the villa and left their old railway-ridden
cottage in possession of Will and Loo--or, to be more correct, Mr and
Mrs Garvie, and all the young Garvies.

But what of timid Mrs Tipps? The great accident did little for her
beyond shaking her nervous system, and confirming her in the belief that
railways were unutterably detestable; that she was not quite sure
whether or not they were sinful; that, come what might, she never wou