The man made no reply, but smoked with increasing intensity, while he frowned at the empty fire-place.
“Well, Martha,” he said, after a prolonged silence, “I’ve got work at last.”
“Have you?” cried the girl, with a look of interest.
“Yes; it ain’t much to boast of, to be sure, but it pays, and, as it ties me to nothin’ an’ nobody, it suits my taste well. I’m wot you may call a appendage o’ the fire-brigade. I hangs about the streets till I sees a fire, w’en, off I goes full split to the nearest fire-station, calls out the engine, and gits the reward for bein’ first to give the alarm.”
“Indeed,” said Martha, whose face, which had kindled up at first with pleasure, assumed a somewhat disappointed look; “I—I fear you won’t make much by that, Phil?”
“You don’t seem to make much by that,” retorted Phil, pointing with the bowl of his pipe to the dress which lay in her lap and streamed in a profusion of rich folds down to the floor.
“Not much,” assented Martha, with a sigh. “Well, then,” continued Phil, re-lighting his pipe, and pausing occasionally in his remarks to admire the bowl, “that bein’ so, you and I are much in the same fix, so if we unites our small incomes, of course that’ll make ’em just double the size.”
“Phil,” said Martha, in a lower voice, as she let her hands and the work on which they were engaged fall on her lap, “I think, now, that it will never be.”
“What’ll never be?” demanded the man rudely, looking at the girl in surprise.
“Our marriage.”