gnised what sort of a creature he was dealing with, and had sense
and delicacy and tact and manliness enough not to startle her by any
demonstration whatever. He only held the little hand, still and fast,
for a space, during which neither of them said anything; then, however,
he bent his head over the hand and kissed it.

"My fingers are not accustomed to such treatment," said Dolly, half
laughing, and trying hard to strike into an ordinary tone of
conversation, though she left him the hand. "I do not think they ever
were kissed before."

"They have got to learn!" said her companion.

Dolly was silent again. It was with a great joy at her heart that she
felt her hand so clasped and held, and knew that Mr. Shubrick had got
his answer and the thing was done; but she did not show it, unless to a
nice observer. And a nice observer was by her side. Yet he kept silence
too for a while. It was one of those full, blessed silences that are
the very reverse of a blank or a void; when the heart's big treasure is
too much to be immediately unpacked, and words when they come are quite
likely enough not to touch it and to go to something comparatively
indifferent. However, words did not just that on the present occasion.

"Dolly, I am in a sort of amazement at my own happiness," Mr. Shubrick
said.

Dolly could have answered, so was she! but she did not. She only
dimpled a little, and flushed.

"I have been waiting for you all these years," he went on; "and now I
have got you!"

Dolly's dimples came out a little more. "I thought you did not wait,"
she remarked.

Mr. Shubrick laughed. "My heart waited," he said. "I made a boy's
mistake; and I might have paid a man's penalty for it. But I had always
known that you and no other would be my wife, if I could find you. That
is, if I could persuade you; and somehow I never allowed myself to
doubt of that. I did not take such a chance into consideration."

"But I was such a little child," said Dolly.

"Ay," said he; "that was it. You were _such_ a little child."

"But you must have been a very extraordinary midshipman, it seems to
me."

"By the same rule you must have been a very extraordinary little girl."

They both laughed at that.

"I suppose we were both extraordinary," said Dolly; "but, really, Mr.
Shubrick, you know very little about me!"

His answer to that was to kiss again the hand he held.

"What do you know of me?"

"I think I know a great deal about you," s