Merrily the fountain leaped and danced, and merrily the smiling dimples twinkled and expanded more and more, until they broke into a laugh against the basin’s rim, and vanished.
‘Tom,’ said his friend, as they turned into the noisy street, ‘I have a proposition to make. It is, that you and your sister—if she will so far honour a poor bachelor’s dwelling—give me a great pleasure, and come and dine with me.’
‘What, to-day?’ cried Tom.
‘Yes, to-day. It’s close by, you know. Pray, Miss Pinch, insist upon it. It will be very disinterested, for I have nothing to give you.’
‘Oh! you must not believe that, Ruth,’ said Tom. ‘He is the most tremendous fellow, in his housekeeping, that I ever heard of, for a single man. He ought to be Lord Mayor. Well! what do you say? Shall we go?’
‘If you please, Tom,’ rejoined his dutiful little sister.
‘But I mean,’ said Tom, regarding her with smiling admiration; ‘is there anything you ought to wear, and haven’t got? I am sure I don’t know, John; she may not be able to take her bonnet off, for anything I can tell.’
There was a great deal of laughing at this, and there were divers compliments from John Westlock—not compliments he said at least (and really he was right), but good, plain, honest truths, which no one could deny. Ruth laughed, and all that, but she made no objection; so it was an engagement.
‘If I had known it a little sooner,’ said John, ‘I would have tried another pudding. Not in rivalry; but merely to exalt that famous one. I wouldn’t on any account have had it made with suet.’
‘Why not?’ asked Tom.