"We are both changed almost beyond recognition, Dick."
Then she added, demurely, "The last time, I had to ask you--"
"You sha'n't have to ask me again, Annie," he said, giving her a hearty kiss. "My first impulse was to do it, but I did not know whether your sentiments on the subject had changed."
"I am not given to change," she said.
"Am I, Mrs. Holland?"
"I don't think you are, my dear. I think there is a little spice of obstinacy in your composition.
"But come in, Dick. Don't let us stand talking here at the door, when we have so much to say to each other."
He went into the sitting room with his father and mother, where Annie presently left them to themselves.
"Why, Father, the privateers must have done well, indeed!" Dick said, looking round the handsome room.
"I have nothing to grumble at, on that score, Dick, though they have not been so lucky the last two years. But it is not their profits that induced us to move here. You saw Annie was in mourning. Her father died, nearly a year ago, and at her earnest request, as he said in his will, appointed us her guardians until she came of age, which will be in a few months now. As he had no near relations, he left the whole of his property to her; and having been in India in the days when, under Warren Hastings, there were good pickings to be obtained, it amounted to a handsome fortune. She said that she should come and live with us, at any rate until she became of age; and as that house of ours, though a comfortable place, was hardly the sort of house for an heiress, she herself proposed that we should take a larger house between us.