colour in existence—even when the question
of colouring the kitchens and back premises
was in course of argumentation.

"What do you say to blue?" he suggests.

As the months glided away, I must confess
that if ever a woman did her best to make
another woman love a man, I was that woman.
I wrote to Pet sheets upon sheets of all my
private ideas; and Pet's letters began to pour
in almost daily, and were full of questions;
and it was astonishing how all these questions
had reference to the squire. It would be
endless to describe the thousand odd questions
in Pet's letters.

Never shall I forget my amazement, when
one day, just catching sight of the bridge,
as I ran by the staircase window, I perceived
an extraordinary figure, without a hat, and with
coat-tails flying, striding over the bridge, as
if he had seven-leagued boots; and before I
could take breath, there was the squire thundering
at the cottage door.

"She accepts me!" he exclaimed, as he burst
into the house, and threw me a letter.

Such a letter! Of that letter I do not like to
say much. It was totally and entirely different
from anything like what Sarah Jane would have
written. If I had been the squire, I should
not have considered it at all the sort of letter
to receive upon such an occasion.

"Robert," I said solemnly to him, on telling
him what was in the letter, "she does not love
him; she only marries him because we have
persuaded her. And he has begged me to ask her
here."

"Then do it, Patty; and when she comes,
whip her; if you do not, I will."

When she arrived, if Robert did not pet
her, and coax her, and humour her, until I was
so bewildered that I quite forgot to order dinner
one day, let alone putting my balls of wool
(I am always knitting) under the clucking hen
instead of her own eggs, which I only found out
when the eggs went smash on the floor out of
my work-basket. Such a lovely sitting, and all
from my grey Dorking! However, I must
allow that Pet required petting. She was as
pale as a clean shirt, and as thin as Robert's
oldest stockings, which it is of no use to mend
any more.

As for her spirits, she had none. No more
chatterations, no more acting of great ladies;
she was as dumb as any dumb-waiter.

It was just what I thought. She was going
to marry the squire, and she did not think she
loved him.

"At this moment, oh! best Patty, I have a
shudder of marrying."

"Then don't do it."

"But I will."

"You naughty Pet, the squire is far too
good for you. He worships you, and he has a
most tender heart, and you will break it, if you
marry him and do not love him."

"Now hear this, Patty. He writes to me;
he says he loves me, and me only; never before,
since, or again, will he love. I think this good;
I like that, it makes me see he is not like other
men; so I am interested. Then he says in his
letter, that I am not to force myself to love him,
or to think of him at all. I am to live always
for now, as if we had never met. He will not
ever come in my sight, because he cannot come,
but that he will always wish I was his wife. So
he says 'Adieu' finally. Now, Patty, what do
you think I find? Tears, tears, running down
my cheeks. I say, What are these tears?
Are you sorry, you bad girl?' And the answer
is, 'I am sorry.' So then I write and say, I
like not that adieu; and when the answer
comes to my letter, it is himself. Then I say
nothing, but that I will write once more, which
I do, and I am this bad girl. I have said
I will marry, and I like not to marry."

"Let me speak to the squire; let me break
it off; it will be utter misery to you both, if
you marry."

"Why misery?" says she, hotly.

To be sure, there was no understanding the
girl!

And what a martyr she looked, on her wedding-
day. Of course Robert and I went to the
wedding, and I almost went on my knees to beg
her to let me break it off, even the very day
before.

How the squire got through the time of his
courtship without an attempt to hang or drown
himself, or to hate her, and break with her,
I do not know. She was more cross-grained
and cantankerous than our brindled cow, which
we were at last obliged to sell, though she was
the best milker we ever had. Fourteen pounds
of butter twice——But I am forgetting Pet's
wedding-day. She was married, and if the squire
had married a statue, she could not have been
more stony. And the squire behaved like an
angel, even if he did not look like one.

"I shall take her far away from you all,"
says he to Robert. "Then by degrees she will
become accustomed to me, and having no one
else to talk to, she will gradually find herself
chatting to me, as she did when first I knew
her."

"Patty, you are a match-maker."

Now I am sure everybody must see, after
reading this history, that the squire made his
own bed, and so must lie on it. He would
marry her, though she plainly showed she hated
the idea of it. I did everything I could to
prevent it, and why she persisted in marrying
him is one of those mysterious paradoxes that
can never be explained. Did she secretly like
him? or did she desire to be rich? or had her
mother persuaded her? or her grandfather
commanded her? I asked myself these questions a
dozen times over, and could not answer them.
Then I asked Robert, and he said at once:

"She is a woman, Patty, of all animals the
most curiously fashioned, and incomprehensibly
organised."

"Now, Robert!"

Isn't it odd that men, even the best of
men, such as Robert is, should have such odd
notions of women? And there is another weakness,