run and find one."

"Dear Miss Hetty, I made no promise. I have no licence. None has
reached me, nor word of one."

"Then he must have it! He told me--that is, I understood--"
She broke off with a laugh most pitiful in John's ears, though it
seemed to reassure her. "But how foolish of me! Of _course_ he must
have it. And you will come with me, at once? At the least you are
willing to come?"

"Surely I will come." John's face was gloomy. "Where are the
lodgings?"

"I cannot tell you the name of the street, but I can find them.
John, you are an angel! And afterwards I will sit and tell you about
Patty to your heart's content. We can be married in the parlour, I
suppose? Or must it be in church? I had rather--far rather--it were
in church if you could manage that for us: but not to lose time.
Perhaps we can find a church later in the day and get permission to
go through the service again. I daresay, though, he has it all
arranged--he said I might leave it to him. You won't tell him, John,
what a fright I have given myself?"

So her tongue ran on as they descended the hill together.
John Romley walked beside her stupidly, wondering if she were in
truth reassured or chattering thus to keep up her hopes. They might,
after all, be justified: but his forebodings weighed on his tongue.
Also the shock had stunned him and all his wits seemed to be buzzing
loose in his head.

They did not notice, although they passed it close, a certain
signboard over a low-browed shop half-way down the street.
Afterwards Hetty remembered passing the shop, and that its one window
was caked with mud and grimed with dust on top of the mud. She did
not see a broad-shouldered man in a dirty baize apron seated at his
work-bench behind the pane. Nor after passing the shop did she turn
her head: but walked on unaware of an ill-shaven face thrust out of
its doorway and staring after her.

William Wright sat at his bench that morning, fitting a leather
washer in a leaky brass tap. In the darkest corner at the back of
the shop his father--a peevish old man, well past seventy--stooped
over a desk, engaged as usual in calculating his book-debts, an
occupation which brought him no comfort but merely ingrained his bad
opinion of mankind. Having drunk his trade into a decline, and being
now superannuated, he nagged over his ledgers from morning to night
and snatched a fearful joy in goading William to the last limit of
forbearanc