Jerry assuredly was no beauty, save that his proportions were good, and he dressed very smartly. He possessed a brown skin which matched well with brown hair and moustache, and had about him the freshness of twenty-two years, which is so charming and lasts so short a time. Dinah with her freckles, her drab hair, and nose "tip-tilted like the petal of a flower"--to mercifully quote Tennyson--suited him very well in looks. And then love made both of them look quite interesting, although not even the all-transforming passion could render them anything but homely. Beside the engaged damsel, Beatrice, tall, slender, dark-locked and dark-eyed, looked like a goddess, but Jerry the devoted had no eye for her while Dinah was present. Had he been Paris, Miss Paslow decidedly would have been awarded the apple. Not having one, he stared at Dinah and she at him as though they were meeting for the first time. Beatrice, impatient of this oblivion to her presence, brought them from Heaven to earth.
"I have to congratulate you, Mr. Snow," she remarked.
"Mr. Snow!" echoed Dinah, jumping up as though a wasp had stung her; "you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Beatrice! Haven't you known Jerry for--oh! for ever so long?
"For quite three years, dear; but, you see, I don't visit at the Vicarage," and Beatrice spoke with some bitterness, as Jerry's mother had always been unkind to the lonely girl, for reasons connected with what Mrs. Snow regarded as her anomalous position.
Jerry coloured and blinked behind his glasses. "I know what you mean, Miss Hedge," he said regretfully, "but don't worry. Call me Jerry as usual; what does it matter what mother thinks?"
"Ah," said Dinah, quivering with alarm, "what does she think of us?"
"Well, she"--Jerry hesitated, and finally answered the question with a solemn warning--"I don't think I'd call at the Vicarage for a few days, Dinah sweetest. She--she--well, you know mother."
"Why does Mrs. Snow object?" asked Beatrice very directly.
"I know oh, none better!" almost shouted Dinah; "no money!"
Jerry nodded, with an admiring glance at her cleverness. "No money."