she quoted.
"I was thinking of those lines, too," said the youth, "but not in connection with my coming of age. Doris, dear, the day after to-morrow I shall return to Oxford." He hesitated.
"Yes, I am sorry you are going."
"Not half so sorry as I am to have to leave you!" he exclaimed. "However, it is my last term at Oxford. When I return next time it will be to stay." He hesitated a little, and then, summoning his courage, added hastily, "Doris, couldn't we become engaged?"
The girl looked up, startled, yet with love and happiness shining in her bright blue eyes. "Is it your wish?" she asked. "Is it really and truly your wish?"
Bernard assured her that it was, and moreover that he had loved her all his life, even when as children they played together at making mud-pies and building castles in the sand, on the rare and joyous occasions when their holidays were passed at the seaside.
"You see, dear," he proceeded, after a few blissful moments, while the autumn sunshine fell caressingly upon their bright young faces, "I am rather young and could not speak to you quite like this if it were not that to-morrow I shall be fairly well off. My money--oh, it seems caddish to speak of money just now!--is invested in Consols, therefore quite safe, and it will give me an income of £500 a year. We shall be able to live on that, Doris."
"Yes." The girl looked down shyly, her cheeks becoming pinker, and her blue eyes shining. She was only nineteen, and she loved him very dearly.
"Of course I shall have to assist my mother," continued Bernard. "She has very little money and will have to live with us when we marry. You won't mind that, dear; if we keep together there will be enough for us all."
"Yes, of course." But for the first time a shadow stole across the girl's face. She was rather afraid of Mrs. Cameron, who was the somewhat stern widow of a Wesleyan minister.