"Then if it's not an engagement, or what I call downright keeping company just yet—say for another year at least, I shan't turn my back upon you."
"Thank you, sir—you are more than generous."
He leaned across the counter and shook hands with Mr. Wesden; the news-agent drove up in his pony-cart at the same moment, and directly afterwards had flung a heavy bundle of the "early mornings" upon the counter; the news-boy entered, and waited for orders for his first round; a little girl came in for a penny postage stamp, change for sixpence, and a piece of paper to wrap the lot in. Business was beginning in Great Suffolk Street, and Sidney Hinchford getting in the way. Sidney would have liked to add a little more, but Mr. Wesden stopped him.
"Harriet's been down this half hour," he said; "I suppose you know that."
"Indeed I did not, sir," exclaimed Sidney, with a wild glance towards the parlour.
Harriet was there, busying herself with the breakfast cloth—a domestic picture, fair and glowing. He dashed into the parlour, and Harriet, prepared for him now, listened demurely, felt her heart plunging a little, but did not rebuke him with any words similar to those of yesternight. His despairing look of that period had kept her restless all night; she could not bear to know that others were unhappy, and she fancied that she should soon learn to love him, if she did not love him already, for his manliness and frankness. So she listened, and Sidney detailed his interview with her father, and her father's wish that it should not be considered an engagement between them until at least another year had passed.
"We are to go on just the same as if nothing had happened, but—but I wish you to look forward to the end of that year like myself, to have hope in me and my efforts, and to give me hopes of you."
"Am I worth hoping for, Sidney?" was the rejoinder; "you don't know half the foolishness of which I have been guilty—what a weak, frivolous, romantic girl I have been."
She thought of her Brighton romance, opened the book, and then shut it hastily again. It was a story he had no right to know yet, and she had not the courage to tell him just then—it belonged wholly to the past, so rake the dead leaves over it and let it rest again!
Let it rest, then; there was no engagement. Both were free to change their minds before the year was out in which the strength of their love would be put to the test. For that year nothing more than friends, she thought, or a something more than friends, and less than lovers.