"Pooh, that makes no difference!"
"And thou wilt help thy mother to go on liking me?"
"Yes. She does everything I ask her to, and I'll tell her you are going to be my best friend."
"I thank thee."
"Well, you are, you know. Of course you are rather old and somewhat plain, and I cannot promise not to think Master Ingle within there is handsomer, but I shall always like you best, and beauty doth not count when you know a person."
"No, but 'tis an amazing good letter of introduction. Now fly up and change to thine old suit and we will build a snow-man as high as the window and we will put curls on him as long as those on that jackanapes inside—I mean as those of the beautiful young man who calls himself Ralph Ingle."
When Cecil had changed to his every-day clothes he came down again looking more comfortable in mind and body. "I think," he confided to Neville, "that I could eat another piece of cake. The belt of this doublet is so much looser than in my best."
"Ay, but there is dinner to come, and 'tis best to make allowance for this future; besides, who is this at the wharf in the in-bound boat?"
"Why, 'tis Couthin Margaret."
"So it is. For a moment I thought her a man in that long cloak and those heavy boots. Let us go down to meet her!"