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Finally, the girl disengaged her hand and stepped forward–

“If you please, sir, are you a clergyman?”

Now this confused me a good deal; for, to tell the truth, I had worn a white tie in my younger days, before. . . So I sat up and asked why she wished to know.

“Because we want to be married.”

I drew a long breath, looked from her to the boy, and asked–

“Is that so?”

“She’s wishful,” answered he, nodding sulkily.

“Oho!” I thought; “Adam and Eve and the apple, complete. Do you love each other?” I asked.

“I adore Billy,” cried the little maid “he’s the stable-boy at the ‘Woolpack’ in Blea-kirk–“

“So I am beginning to smell,” I put in.

–“and we put up there last night–father and I. We travel in a chaise. And this morning in the stable I saw Billy for the first time, and to see him is to love. He is far below me in station, –ain’t you, Billy dear? But he rides beautifully, and is ever so strong, and not so badly ed–educated as you would fancy: he can say all his ‘five-times.’ And he worships me,–don’t you, Billy?”

“Washups,” said Billy, stolidly.

“Do you mean to tell me you have trotted in this sun all the way from Bleakirk?” I inquired.

The girl nodded. She was a splendid child–dark-haired, proud of chin, and thoroughbred down to her very toes. And the looks of fondness she threw at that stable-urchin were as good as a play.

“And what will you do,” I asked, “when you are married?”

“Go home and ask my father’s forgiveness. He is proud; but very, very kind.”

I told them I was a clergyman, and began to cast round in my mind what to do next; for the marriage service of the Church isn’t exactly the thing to repeat to two babes, and the girl was quick enough to detect and resent any attempt at fooling. So at last I persuaded them to sit together under the gorse-bush, and told them that matrimony was a serious matter, and that a long exhortation was necessary. They settled themselves to listen.

Having been twice married, I did not lack materials for a discourse. Indeed, when I talk of married life, it is a familiar experience with me to be carried away by my subject. Nor was I altogether surprised, on looking up after half an hour’s oratory, to find the little ones curled in each other’s arms, fast asleep.

So I spread my coat over them, and next (because the fancy took me, and not a breath of air was stirring) I treated them much as the robins treated the Babes in the Wood, strewing all my Tracts, pink and white, over them, till all but their faces was covered. And then I set off for the “Woolpack.”

One spring morning, ten years later, I was standing outside the “Woolpack,” drinking my mug of beer with a tall recruiting sergeant, and discussing the similarity of our professions, when a post-chaise appeared at the head of the street, and a bobbing red postillion’s jacket, and a pair of greys that came down the hill with a rattle, and drew up at the inn-door.

A young lady and a young gentleman sat in the chaise, and the first glance told they were newly married. They sat in the chaise, and held each other by the hand, while the horses were changing. And because I had a bundle of tracts that fitted their condition, and because the newly married often pay for a thing beyond its worth, I approached the chaise-door.

The fresh horses were in as I began my apologies; and the post-boy was settling himself in the saddle. Judge of my astonishment when he leant back, cut me sharply across the calves with his long whip, and before I could yell had started his horses up the opposite hill at a gallop. The hind wheel missed my toes by an inch. In three minutes the carriage and red coat were but a speck on the road that led up to the downs.