“There’s no need to be like a monkey-on-a-stick, and at the same time there’s no need to be sulky,” he pointed out; “there’s a happy medium.”

“Like you, I s’pose?” said the frantic suitor.  “Like me,” said the other, gravely.  “Now, you watch; fall in behind and watch.”

He drew Miss Foster’s arm through his and, leaning towards her with tender deference, began a long conversation.  At the end of ten minutes Mr. Widden intimated that he thought he had learned enough to go on with.

“Ah! that’s only your conceit,” said Mr. Letts over his shoulder.  “I was afraid you was conceited.”

He turned to Miss Foster again, and Mr. Widden, with a despairing gesture, abandoned himself to gloom.  He made no further interruptions, but at the conclusion of the walk hesitated so long on the door-step that Mr. Letts had to take the initiative.

“Good-night,” he said, shaking hands.  “Come round to-morrow night and I’ll give you another lesson.  You’re a slow learner, that’s what you are; a slow learner.”

He gave Mr. Widden a lesson on the following evening, but cautioned him sternly against imitating the display of brotherly fondness of which, in a secluded lane, he had been a wide-eyed observer.

“When you’ve known her as long as I have—­nineteen years,” said Mr. Letts, as the other protested, “things’ll be a bit different.  I might not be here, for one thing.”

By exercise of great self-control Mr. Widden checked the obvious retort and walked doggedly in the rear of Miss Foster.  Then, hardly able to believe his ears, he heard her say something to Mr. Letts.

“Eh?” said that gentleman, in amazed accents.

“You fall behind,” said Miss Foster.

“That—­that’s not the way to talk to the head of the family,” said Mr. Letts, feebly.

“It’s the way I talk to him,” rejoined the girl.

It was a position for which Mr. Letts was totally unprepared, and the satisfied smile of Mr. Widden as he took the vacant place by no means improved matters.  In a state of considerable dismay Mr. Letts dropped farther and farther behind until, looking up, he saw Miss Foster, attended by her restive escort, quietly waiting for him.  An odd look in her eyes as they met his gave him food for thought for the rest of the evening.

At the end of what Mr. Letts was pleased to term a month’s trial, Mr. Widden was still unable to satisfy him as to his fitness for the position of brother-in-law.  In a spirit of gloom he made suggestions of a mutinous nature to Mr. Green, but that gentleman, who had returned one day pale and furious, but tamed, from an interview that related to his treatment of his wife, held out no hopes of assistance.

“I wash my hands of him,” he said bitterly.  “You stick to it; that’s all you can do.”

“They lost me last night,” said the unfortunate.  “I stayed behind just to take a stone out of my shoe, and the earth seemed to swallow them up.  He’s so strong.  That’s the worst of it.”