all and we would go on nice and comfortable
together."

"For you, yes," said Chawner, winking his eye. "But what about me? I don't
intend to neighbour so close as all that with a policeman, I do assure
you, my fine dear. And so us'll watch and wait, and see if Samuel Borlase
have got that fine quality of patience so needful to his calling--also
what sort of hold he can show me on the savings bank, and so on."

Then he turned to the young man.

"I know nought against you, Samuel," he said, "but I know nothing for you
neither. So it will be a very clever action if we just go on as we're
going and see what life looks like a good year hence."

More than that Chawner wouldn't say; but he recognised they should walk
out together and unfold their feelings, and he promised that in a year's
time he'd decide whether Samuel was up to the mark for his girl.

He was a good bit of a puzzle to Borlase, but the younger, in justice,
couldn't quarrel with the verdict, and he only hoped that Cicely wouldn't
change her mind in such a parlous long time; for a year to the eye of love
be a century.

Well, as elders in such a pass will do, Chawner took careful stock of Sam,
and the more he gleaned of the young man's opinions the better he liked
him. Old Green was tolerable shrewd, and along with a passion for natural
history and its wonders, he didn't leave human nature out of account. He
was going on with his own life very clever, unknown to all but one person,
and among his varied interests was a boy-like love of practical joking.
But among his occupations the story of Samuel Borlase came first for a
bit, and he both talked and listened to the young fellow and was a good
bit amused on the quiet to find Samuel didn't hold by no means such a high
opinion of him as he began to feel for the policeman.

Of course, Cicely was always there to help his judgment; but though the
natural instinct of the parent is to misdoubt a child's
opinions--generally with tolerable good reason--it happened in this case
that love lit the girl's mind to good purpose. She'd laugh with her father
sometimes, that Sam hadn't no dazzling sense of fun himself, and it
entertained her a lot to see Sam plodding in his mind after her
nimble-witted father and trying in vain to see a joke. But what delighted
her most was Sam's own dark forebodings about Mr. Green's manner of life,
and his high-minded hopes that some day, come he was Chawner's son-in-law,
he would save the