"What's that?" she asked, looking up at him, frightened at the solemnity in his tone.
"You must never talk of Alison to me. Promise, do you hear?"
"Oh, why not? You can't care for her a bit, or you wouldn't come to me."
"I like you most—I wouldn't ask you to marry me if I didn't; but I won't talk of Alison. If you can't have me without bringing up her name, say so at once, and everything shall be at an end between us. Now you have got to choose. Alison's name is not to pass yer lips to me. We are not to talk of her, do you understand? Do you promise?"
"I promise anything—anything, if you will only kiss me again."
CHAPTER XII.
The next day it was all over the place that Jim Hardy and Louisa Clay were engaged. Harry heard the news as he was coming home from doing a message for Grannie; Grannie heard it when she went shopping; Alison heard it from the boy who sold the milk—in short, this little bit of tidings of paramount interest in Alison's small world was dinned into her ears wherever she turned. Jim was engaged. His friends thought that he had done very well for himself, and it was arranged that the wedding was to take place just before Lent. Lent would fall early this year, and Jim's engagement would not last much over six weeks.
Notwithstanding all she had said the day before, Alison turned very pale when the cruel news came to her.
"What can it mean?" said Grannie, who followed the girl into her bedroom. "I don't understand it—there must be an awful mistake somewhere. You can't, surely, have thrown over a good fellow like that, Alison?"