"No, lasses are strange things," Jack meditated again. "But, Harry, you are as old as I am, and are earning the same wage; why don't you marry her?"
"I would," Harry said earnestly, "to-morrow if she'd have me."
"You would!" Jack exclaimed, as much astonished as by his friend's first proposition. "To think of that now! Why, you have always been with her just as I have. You have never shown that you cared for her, never given her presents, nor walked with her, nor anything. And do you really care for her, Harry?"
"Aye," Harry said shortly, "I have cared for her for years."
"And to think that I have never seen that!" Jack said. "Why didn't you tell me? Why, you are as difficult to understand as she is, and I thought I knew you so well!"
"What would have been the use?" Harry said. "Nelly likes me as a friend, that's all."
"That's it," Jack said. "Of course when people are friends they don't think of each other in any other way. Still, Harry, she may get to in time. Nelly's pretty well a woman, she's seventeen now, but she has no one else after her that I know of."
"Well, Jack, I fancy she could have plenty after her, for she's the prettiest and best girl o' the place; but you see, you are always about wi' her, and I think that most people think it will be a match some day."
"People are fools," Jack burst out wrathfully. "Who says so? just tell me who says so?"
"People say so, Jack. When a young chap and a lass walk together people suppose there is something in it, and you and Nelly ha' been walking together for the last five years."