"Will you give an honest answer?"
She nodded.
"Well then, do you like me as much as you did when I used to maltreat you and bully you and threaten you? Or do you like me more, or do you like me less?"
"It's just the same," she said, "only that then I was unhappy all the time, and now all the time I'm happy."
"Were you unhappy because I wasn't kind?"
She laughed that idea to scorn. "I was unhappy because you liked somebody else more than me."
The amusement went out of Blizzard's face; the tenderness remained. There was one thing that he was determined to do with his life, and that was to make Rose a good husband. And he was very fond of her, and she could make him laugh, but it wasn't going to be very easy, as long as the image of another girl persisted in haunting him.
LI
When Wilmot Allen left Blizzard's house, he went direct to a barber-shop, where he remained for three hundred years. During this period, he lost his beard and thereby regained his self-respect. It took him a hundred years to reach the Grand Central, and a thousand more to get from there to Clovelly.