“We shall see, my friend,” replied Mr. Ben Allen fiercely. He paused for a few seconds, and added in a voice broken by emotion, “You have loved her from a child, my friend. You loved her when we were boys at school together, and, even then, she was wayward and slighted your young feelings. Do you recollect, with all the eagerness of a child’s love, one day pressing upon her acceptance, two small caraway-seed biscuits and one sweet apple, neatly folded into a circular parcel with the leaf of a copybook?”

“I do,” replied Bob Sawyer.

“She slighted that, I think?” said Ben Allen.

“She did,” rejoined Bob. “She said I had kept the parcel so long in the pockets of my corduroys, that the apple was unpleasantly warm.”