I was Nelson!
how he must enjoy himself!"

"But if you have love of continual danger, and eagerness to be always
at it," said Mary, with wide Yorkshire sense, much as she admired this
heroic type, "the proper thing for you to do is to lead a single life.
You might be enjoying all the danger very much; but what would your wife
at home be doing? Only to knit, and sigh, and lie awake."

Mary made a bad hit here. This picture was not at all deterrent; so
daring are young men, and so selfish.

"Nothing of that sort should ever come to pass," cried Robin, with the
gaze of the head of a household, "supposing only that my wife was you.
I would be home regularly every night before the kitchen clock struck
eight. I would always come home with an appetite, and kiss you, and do
both my feet upon the scraper. I would ask how the baby was, and carry
him about, and go 'one, two, three,' as the nurses do, I would quite
leave the government to put on taxes, and pay them--if I could--without
a word of grumble. I would keep every rope about the house in order, as
only a sailor knows how to do, and fettle my own mending, and carry out
my orders, and never meddle with the kitchen, at least unless my opinion
was sought for concerning any little thing that might happen to be meant
for me."

"Well," exclaimed Mary, "you quite take my breath away. I had no idea
that you were so clever. In return for all these wonders, what should
poor I have to do?"

"Poor I would only have to say just once, 'Robin, I will have you, and
begin to try to love you.'"

"I am afraid that it has been done long ago; and the thing that I ought
to do is to try and help it."

What happened upon this it would be needless to report, and not only
needless, but a vast deal worse--shabby, interloping, meddlesome and
mean, undignified, unmanly, and disreputably low; for even the tanner
and his wife (who must have had right to come forward, if anybody had)
felt that their right was a shadow, and kept back as if they were a
hundred miles away, and took one another by the hand and nodded, as much
as to say: "You remember how we did it; better than that, my dear. Here
is your good health."

This being so, and the time so sacred to the higher emotions, even
the boldest intruder should endeavor to check his ardor for intrusion.
Without any inkling of Preventive Force, Robin and Mary, having once
done away with all that stood between them, found it very difficult to
be too