taken at your word just now, and didn't expect tobe, that's the joke. And now I've got to put this ring back in itsplace, I suppose. The next time that you take it off for the childishsatisfaction of dangling it an inch from my nose I shall keep it andgive it to some other girl."
"Miss Bolton perhaps?" remarked Jill in her nastiest tone.
"Don't you think it would be better," he suggested without looking ather, "to leave Evie's name out of our disputes?"
"I don't know whether you consider it gentlemanly," Jill cried fiercely,"to try and make me feel mean?"
"I'm glad if I have succeeded in making you feel it," he answeredimperturbably, patting the ring in place, and slowly releasing her hand,"for you certainly are mean. Your meanness is, in fact, only to beequalled by your bad temper and that exceeds it. I am not blind to yourfaults you may observe; they are as plentiful as flies in summer, andequally irritating."
"And to think," exclaimed Jill in exasperation, "that I was going togive you up just for your personal benefit! I won't now; if you try toback out of it I'll have you up for breach of promise."
"You will, will you? Jove! I almost believe you would. And you'd winyour case too, for if you looked as belligerent as you do at present thejury would be afraid to give it against you. It isn't a bit of use,Jill, getting nasty; I'm in such an angelic frame of mind myself thatnot even you could put me out. Get your hat on, old girl, and let's goand look for our shop together. We are going to become publicbenefactors, and hand down to posterity the idealised representatives ofthe present generation."
Jill smiled scornfully.
"I am sorry for the idealisation if you are going to operate; they'll bemore like caricatures I'm thinking. What do you know aboutphotography?"
"Know about it!" echoed St. John indignantly. "Why I've got a camera ofmy own; Evie and I used to dabble a good deal in photography at onetime."
"It strikes me that you _dabbled_ in a great many things," retortedJill. "Perhaps that accounts for the very indifferent manner in whichyou do everything. If you are counting on your amateur efforts solely,I fear we shall end in the bankruptcy court."
"Jill," he said very gravely, and in such an altered tone that Jilllooked up in surprise, "are you afraid to throw in your lot with minenow that my circumstances are almost as destitute and uncertain as yourown?"
Jill gave a gasp. For a moment she looked as if about to offer anindignant protest, the next she dissolved into tears. St. John'shalf-formed suspicions faded immediately. His father had planted themin his mind the night before. He had said "tell her that you arepenniless and see how sincere her love will prove." The girl'suncertain mood had recalled the words to his memory but he knew as soonas he had spoken by the look in her eyes that he had entirely misjudgedher.
"How can you say such unkind things?" she cried. "I believe you aretrying to make me hate you."
"Darling," he said contritely, slipping his arm about her, and holdingher closely to him, "forgive me; I didn't mean it, indeed I didn't."
"You did," sobbed Jill. "You thought that I had been running after youas a good speculation--"
"Don't, dear," he entreated, "you make me feel so ashamed of myself."
"And so you ought to," she answered, drying her eyes on the corner ofher painting apron, and looking up at him with a very woebegone face."I shall never forget that, I'm afraid; I have a horrid memory for cruelthings, and I have loved you so truly all the time. I would go througha dozen bankruptcy courts with you, and--and--and end up in thework-house even sooner than lose you now."
She dropped her head again with a fresh burst of tears, and St. Johnfelt as intensely miserable as it is possible for a man to feel,intensely ashamed of himself also for giving voice to such an unjustsuspicion. He racked his brains in search of something soothing, butthe only thing he could find to say was,--
"Don't keep hitting a fellow when he's down, Jill."
It wasn't a very brilliant, nor a very original remark, but it was thevery luckiest thing he could have hit upon. Its effect on Jill wasmarvellous; she recollected what she might have remembered sooner, thathe had been passing through very stormy times lately, and all on heraccount. A man does not generally relish breaking with his family andthrowing up a luxurious home for the doubtful prospect of earning hisown living when he has not been brought up to any profession, and hasn'ta superabundance of capital to launch him into a going concern. St.John had certainly not relished it, but he had made no complaint and hadmet his ill fortune with a cheerfulness and pluck which did him infinitecredit. Jill mopped her eyes again vigorously and put both arms aroundhis neck.
"I have been horrid," she said; "I have done nothing but worried youever since you came, and you were worried enough before. Jack dear, I'mafraid we shall quarrel dreadfully after we are married. I really ambad-tempered, and you are not--not altogether amiable, are you?"
St. John laughed.
"I don't care," he said, "so long as we make it up again. Rows are likehills in cycling, beastly at first, but when you're used to 'em a flatroad seems dreadfully monotonous."
Jill saw very little of her fiance during the next week. He was busylooking for something to do! for she had declared that until he foundpermanent occupation their marriage must be postponed; she was not goingto take such a serious plunge on the strength of the five hundredpounds. St. John acknowledged the wisdom of her decision but chafed atthe delay. Having been ejected from the paternal roof he was anxious tohave a home of his own, and more than anxious to see Jill at the head ofhis frugal board. He was not quite sure how Jill existed; it worriedhim rather to think of her poverty; but she would take no assistancefrom him. Once he deprecatingly offered her a ten pound note which shehowever firmly refused. She would not allow him to support her until hehad the right to do so.
"Don't you think that that's rather straining at a gnat?" he said.
"Perhaps," she answered smiling. "But you would not like to think thatyour coming had lessened my pride and independence, and made me lazy andunselfreliant, would you? If I actually need assistance I will come toyou, dear old boy."
And so he had gone forth in search of a livelihood more than everanxious for the ceremony to come off, and not a little eager to commencethe new life of independence and hard work. St. John had a friend whoknew everything. There is a difference between a man who knowseverything and the man who thinks he does; St. John's friend was theright sort, and he put him in the way of the very thing he was lookingfor. A photographer of the firm of Thompkins and Co, having recentlydissolved partnership through the Co, setting up for himself wasadvertising through the regular channels for a new partner. St. John'sfriend having some slight acquaintance with Thompkins introduced thetwo, and eventually St. John invested his capital and returned to thestudio in triumph to inform Jill with much pride and satisfaction thathe represented the Co in "Thompkins and Co.--photographers."
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
"And now, Mrs St. John, I think we'll go and have lunch," Jill's newhusband remarked as they stood together outside the Registrar's office,the sun shining brightly on the two faces, his quietly amused, hers alittle grave and wondering at the importance of the now irrevocable stepwhich they had taken. At the sound of her new name Jill smiled. "Itwill be our wedding breakfast," she said.
"So it will. We'll have fizz and go a buster--a man doesn't get marriedevery day. I didn't sleep a wink last night, Jill for thinking of it."
Jill hadn't slept either. In morbid retrospection, half sweet, halfpainful, she had spent the night in the empty studio--empty because St.John had had every stick of hers removed to her new home, even to theremains of the Clytie that he had broken, and which had been carefullypreserved among Jill's other treasures as too sacred to be thrown away.She looked up at him, the memory of all his thoughtfulness adding anincreased tenderness to the loving smile that chased the momentarysadness from her face.
"You're a goose, my big boy," she said slipping her hand through
his armas she spoke with a very unwonted display of affection. "And how niceto feel that you are my boy--my very own. No one can part us now, Jack;not all the spiteful machinations of the tyrannical, disagreeable,up-to-date parent can come between you and me, dear, nor alter the factthat we are man and wife."
"That's true," replied St. John with mock resignation. "There's nogetting out of it edgeways; for there is a helpless finality aboutmatrimony that carries its own conviction. Jill, my dear, you