ome to dinner, tired, and approved of the steak, which, he
declared, beat even the ham and eggs.

"We're getting on first-rate," he said, in answer to Nell's inquiry;
"and I'm afraid we shan't make a very long stay here. I'd hoped that
this job would spin out for--oh, ever so long; but it will have to be
pushed through in a few weeks. They're waking up at the house like mad.
Money makes the mare go! And there's no end to the money this young lord
has got. But, from all I hear, he's a decent sort----"

Nell laughed.

"Please don't you begin to sing his praises, Dick," she said. "I've
heard a general chorus of laudations all the morning, and I think I am
just a wee bit tired of my Lord of Angleford! Though I'm very grateful
to him for this change! I wish we could turn lodgekeepers, Dick! Fancy
living here always!"

They were seated in the porch--Dick smoking away furiously--and she
gazed wistfully at the greensward, and the trunks of the great elms
glowing like copper in the rays of the setting sun.

"And, oh, Dick!" she cried, "if only Mr. Falconer could be here! How he
would enjoy it! He's always talking of the country, and how much good it
would do him!"

"Poor beggar--yes!" said Dick, with a nod of sympathy. "I say, Nell, why
shouldn't we ask him to pay us a visit?"

Nell grew radiant at the suggestion; then looked doubtful.

"But may we?" she asked. "This isn't our lodge, Dick; though I have
begun to feel as if it were."

"Nonsense!" said Dick emphatically. "The agent placed it absolutely at
our disposal. A nice state of things if we couldn't ask a friend! Have
Britons--especially engineers--become slaves? I pause for a reply. No?
Good! Then I'll write him a line that will fetch him down--with his
fiddle! What a pity we haven't got a piano!"

Nell laughed.

"Yes, we could put it in the sitting room, and look at it through the
window; for there certainly wouldn't be room inside for it and us
together!"

Dick wrote the next day, and Falconer walked up and down his bare and
narrow room, with the letter in his hand, his thin face flushing and
then paling with longing and doubt. To be in the country, in the same
house with her! And yet--would it not be wiser to refuse? His love grew
large enough when it was only fed on memory; it would grow beyond
restraint in such close companionship. Better to refuse and remain where
he was than to go near her, and so increase the store of agony which the
final parting w