Roland Yorke / A Sequel to "The Channings"

by Mrs. Henry Wood

In this impulsive fashion, he began telling her his plans and his dreams. That he had determined to make an income and a home for her: as a beginning, until something better turned up, he was working all his spare time at copying deeds, "nearly night and day." One less unsophisticated than Roland Yorke, might have suppressed a small item of the programme--that which related to Annabel's contributing to the fund herself, by obtaining pupils. Not he. He avowed it just as openly as his own intention of getting "something under Government." In short, Roland made the young lady a regular offer. Or, rather, did not so much make the offer, as assume that it had been already made, and was, so far, settled. His arguments were sensible; his plans looked really feasible; the day-dreams tolerably bright.

"But I have not said I would have you yet," spoke Annabel all in a flutter, when she could get a word in edgeways. "You should not make so sure of things."

"Not make sure of it! Not have me!" cried Roland, in indignant remonstrance. "Now look you here, Annabel--you know you'll have me: it is all nonsense to make believe you won't. I don't suppose I've asked you in the proper way, or put things in the proper light; but you ought to make allowance for a fellow who has had his manners knocked out of him at Port Natal. When the time arrives that I've got a little house and a few chairs and tables in its rooms, you'll come home to me and I'll try and make you happy in it, and work for you till I drop! There! If I knew how to say it better, I would: and you need not despise a man for his incapable way of putting it. Not have me! I'd like to know who you would have, if not me!"

Annabel Channing offered no farther remonstrance. That she had contrived to fall in love with Roland Yorke, and would rather marry him than anybody else in the world, she knew all too well. The home and the chairs and the tables in it, and the joint working together to keep it going, wore a bright vista to her heart, looked at from a distance with youth's hopeful eyes. But she did not speak: and Roland, mistaking her silence, regarded it as a personal injury.

"When I and Arthur are the dearest friends in the world! He'd give you to me off-hand; I know it. It is not kind of you, Annabel. We engaged ourselves to each other when you were a little one and I was a tall donkey of fourteen, and if I've ever thought of a wife at all since I grew up, it was of you. I have done nothing but think of you since I came back. I wonder how you'd feel if I turned round and said, 'I don't know that I shall have you.' Not jovial, I know."

"You should not bring up the nonsense we said when we were children," returned Annabel, at a loss what else to answer. "I'm sure I could not have been above seven. We were playing at oranges and lemons: I remember the evening quite well: and you----"

"Now just you be open, Annabel, and say what it is your mind's harbouring against me," interrupted Roland, in a tone of deep feeling. "Is it that twenty-pound note of old Galloway's?--or is it because I went knocking about at Port Natal?"

"Oh, Roland, how foolish you are! As if I could think of either!"

And there was something in the words and tone, in the pretty, shy, blushing face that reassured Roland. From that moment he looked upon matters as irrevocably settled, gave Annabel's hand a squeeze against his side, and went on to enlarge upon his dreams of the future.

"I've taken counsel with myself and with Mrs. J., and I don't think the pair of us are likely to be led astray by romance, Annabel, for she is one of the strong-minded ones. She agrees with me that we might do well on three hundred a year; and, what with my work and your pupils, we could make that easily. But, I said to her, let's be on the safe side, and put it down at only two hundred. Just to begin with, you know, Annabel. She said, 'Yes, we might do on that if we were both economical'--and I'm sure if I've not learnt to be that I've learnt nothing. I would not risk the temptation of giving away--which I am afraid I'm prone to--for you should be cash-keeper, Annabel; just as Mrs. J. keeps my sovereign a week now. My goodness! the having no money in one's pocket is a safeguard. When I see things in the shop windows, whether it's eatables, or what not, I remember my lack of cash, and pass on. I stopped to look at a splendid diamond necklace yesterday in Regent Street, and thought how much I should like to get it for you; but with empty pockets, where was the use of going in to enquire the price?"