“Not you, I suppose, Agnes?”

“Not me!” raising her cheerful face from the music she is copying. “Do you hear him, Papa?⁠—The eldest Miss Larkins.”

“To⁠—to Captain Bailey?” I have just enough power to ask.

“No; to no Captain. To Mr. Chestle, a hop-grower.”

I am terribly dejected for about a week or two. I take off my ring, I wear my worst clothes, I use no bear’s grease, and I frequently lament over the late Miss Larkins’s faded flower. Being, by that time, rather tired of this kind of life, and having received new provocation from the butcher, I throw the flower away, go out with the butcher, and gloriously defeat him.

This, and the resumption of my ring, as well as of the bear’s grease in moderation, are the last marks I can discern, now, in my progress to seventeen.