at Heathknowes. Why, then,
begin so suddenly to play upon the sounding strings of family and long
descent?

Indeed, we two thought but little more about the matter. Our minds were
fully enough occupied. The wonder of those new days--the unexpected,
unforeseen glory of the earth--the sudden sweetness of love,
unbelievable, hardly yet realized, overwhelmed and confounded us.

And, more than all, there was the search for a house. The Advocate met
me every day with his queer smile, but though he put my salary on a more
secure basis, and arranged that in future I should be paid by the
printer and not by himself, the sum total of my income was not
materially altered.

"What's enough for one is abundance for two!" was his motto. And the
aphorism rang itself out to his tiny rose-coloured nails on the lid of
the tortoise-shell snuffbox. Then he added a few leading cases as became
one learned in the law.

"I began the same way myself," he said, "and though I have a bigger
house now and serving men in kneebreeks and powder in their hair, I
never go by that cottage out by Comely Bank without a 'pitter-patter' of
my sinful old heart!"

He thought for a while, and then added, "Aye, aye--there's no way for
young folk to start life like being poor and learning to hain on the
gowns and the broadcloth! What matter the trimmings, when ye have one
another?"

As to the house, it was naturally Irma who did most of the searching.
For me, I had to be early at the secretary's office, and often late at
the printer's. But there was always some time in the day that I had to
myself--could I only foresee it before I left home in the morning.
"Home" was, so far, at Mrs. Craven's, where the good Amelia had given us
up her chamber, and Freddy rose an hour earlier, so that his wall-press
bed might be closed and the "room" made ready for Irma's breakfast
parlour.

All the three begged that we might stay on. We were, they declared with
one voice, not putting them to the smallest inconvenience. But I knew
different, and besides, I had a constant and consuming desire for a
house of mine own, however small.

Ever since I first knew Irma, a dream had haunted me. In days long past
it had come, when I was only an awkward laddie gazing after her on the
Eden Valley meadows. Often it had returned to me during the tedious
silences of three years--when, quite against the proverb, love had grown
by feeding upon itself.

And my dream was this.

I was i