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"No, darling, no; I am afraid not," he says, very gently. But for the poor child's tender earnestness and good faith, he could almost have felt some faint amusement; but this offering of hers is to him a sacred thing, and to treat her words as a jest is a thought far from him. Indeed, to give wilful offence to any one, by either word or action, would be very foreign to his nature. For if "he is gentil that doth gentil dedis" be true, Rodney to his finger-tips is gentleman indeed., "If—if you loved a fellow, would anything turn you against him?" asks he, suddenly, looking her full in the face., "Nicholas, come here," says Doatie, anxiously, from out the shadow in which she is sitting, somewhat away from the rest. And Nicholas, going to her finds comfort and grows calm again beneath the touch of the slim little fingers she slips into his beneath the cover of the friendly darkness, "I don't see why we shouldn't launch out into reckless extravagance now our time threatens to be so short," says Jack, moodily. "Let's us entertain our neighbors right royally before the end comes. Why not wind up like the pantomimes, with showers of gold and rockets and the gladsome noise of ye festive cracker?".