had to turn back home again, and go to her room as if
she was taken ill; and that's the way Mrs. M'Gruder came to know what
Sam was intending. She never suspected it before; but, hech sirs! if she
did n't open a broadside on every one of us! And the upshot was, Dolly
was packed off home to her father; Sam went back to Leghorn; and there's
Sally and Maggie going back in everything ever they learned; for it
ain't every day you pick up a lass like that for eighteen pounds a year,
and her washing."

"But did he ask her to marry him?" cried Tony.

"He did. He wrote a letter--a very good and sensible letter too--to her
father. He told him that he was only a junior, with a small share, but
that he had saved enough to furnish a house, and that he hoped, with
industry and care and thrifty ways, he would be able to maintain a wife
decently and well; and he referred to Dr. Forbes of Auchterlonie for
a character of him; and I backed it myself, saying, in the name of the
house, it was true and correct."

"What answer came to this?"

"A letter from the minister, saying that the lassie was poorly, and in
so delicate a state of health it would be better not to agitate her by
any mention of this kind for the present; meanwhile he would take up
his information from Dr. Forbes, whom he knew well; and if the reply
satisfied him, he 'd write again to us in the course of a week or two;
and Sam's just waiting patiently for his answer, and doing his best, in
the mean while, to prepare, in case it's a favorable one."

Tony fell into a revery. That story of a man in love with one it might
never be his destiny to win had its own deep significance for him. Was
there any grief, was there any misery, to compare with it? And although
Sam M'Gruder, the junior partner in the rag trade, was not a very
romantic sort of character, yet did he feel an intense sympathy for him.
They were both sufferers from the same malady,--albeit Sam's attack was
from a very mild form of the complaint.

"You must give me a letter to your brother," said he at length. "Some
day or other I 'm sure to be in Italy, and I'd like to know him."

"Ay, and he like to know _you_, now that he ain't jealous of you.
The last thing he said to me at parting was, 'If ever I meet that Tony
Butler, I 'll give him the best bottle of wine in my cellar.'"

"When you write to him next, say that I 'm just as eager to take _him_
by the hand, mind that. The man that's like to be a good hus