“Sixpence!” squeaked the housemaid.
“Well, it did feel like it, sutternly,” said Edward; “but it was arf a suffrin’.”
“But what did he mean by never ceasing from the pursuit till she gave herself to another? Would she give herself to another?” said cook, who was very moist of eye.
“No, I should say not—never!” said the housemaid.
And so said, mentally, Charley Vining as, disappointed and half maddened, he galloped homeward that afternoon; but the day came when, bitterly laughing to himself, he said otherwise, and hummed with aching heart the words of the old song:
“Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman’s fair?”
And then he turned over and over in his hand—what?
A wedding-ring!