Colin,\' Minna Wroe said to the young workman one evening, as they walked together through the streets of London towards the Regent\'s Park: \'do you know what I\'ve actually gone and done to-day? I\'ve give notice.\'

\'Given notice, Minna! What for, on earth? Why, you seemed to me so happy and comfortable there. I\'ve never seen you in any other place where you and your people seemed to pull so well together, like.\'

\'Ah, that\'s just what she said to me, Colin.\' (She in this connection may be familiarly recognised as a pronoun enclosing its own antecedent.) \'She said she couldn\'t imagine what my reason could be for leaving; and so I just up and told her. And as it isn\'t any use keeping it from you any longer, I think I may as well up and tell you too, Colin. Colin, I don\'t mean any more to be a servant.\'

Cohn looked at her, dazzled and stunned a little by the suddenness and conciseness of this resolute announcement. Half a dozen vague and unpleasant surmises ran quickly through his bewildered brain. \'Why, Minna,\' he exclaimed with some apprehension, looking down hastily at her neat little figure and her pretty, dimpled gipsy face, \'you\'re not going—no you\'re not going to the drapery, are you?\'

Minna\'s twin dimples on the rich brown cheeks grew deeper and deeper, and she laughed merrily to herself a wee musical ringing laugh. \'The drapery, indeed,\' she cried, three-quarters amused and one-quarter indignant. \'The drapery, he says to me! No, Mr. Colin, if you please, sir, I\'m not going to be a shop-girl, thank you. A pretty shop-girl I should make now, shouldn\'t I? That\'s just like all you men: you think nobody can go in for bettering themselves, only yourselves. If a girl doesn\'t want to be a parlour-maid any longer, you can\'t think of anything but she must want to go and be a shop-girl. I wonder you didn\'t say a barmaid. If you don\'t beg my pardon at once for your impudence, I won\'t tell you anything more about it.\'

\'I beg your pardon, I\'m sure, Minna,\' Colin answered submissively. \'I didn\'t mean to hurt your feelings.\'

\'And good reason, too, sir. But as you\'ve got the grace to do it, I\'ll tell you all the rest. Do you know what I do with my money, Colin?\'

\'You save it all, I know, Minna.\'

\'Well, I save it all. And then, I\'ve got grandmother\'s eleven pound, what she left me; and the little things I\'ve been given now and again by visitors and such like. And I\'ve worked all through the “Complete Manual of Letter Writing,” and the “English History,” and the “First School Arithmetic “: and now, Miss Woollacott—you know; her at the North London Birkbeck Girls\' Schools—she says she\'ll take me on as a sort of a pupil-teacher, to look after the little ones and have lessons myself for what I can do, if only I\'ll pay her my own board and lodging.\'

Colin gazed at the girl aghast. \'A pupil-teacher, Minna!\' he cried in astonishment. \'A pupil-teacher! Why, my dear child, what on earth do you mean to do when you\'re through it all?\'

Minna dropped her plump brown hand from his arm at the gate of the park, and stood looking up at him pettishly with bright eyes flashing. \'There you are again,\' she said, with a little touch of bitterness in her pretty voice. \'Just like you men always. You think it\'s all very well for Colin Churchill to want to go and be a sculptor, and talk with fine ladies and gentlemen, and make his fortune, and become a great man by-and-by, perhaps, like that Can-over, or somebody: that\'s all quite right and proper; of course it is. But for Minna Wroe, whose people are every bit as good as his, to save up her money, and do her best to educate herself, and fit herself to be his equal, and become a governess,—why, that of course is quite unnatural. Her proper place is to be a parlour-maid: she ought to go on all her life long cleaning silver, and waiting on the ladies and gentlemen, and changing the plates at dinner—that\'s just about what she\'s fit for. She\'s only a woman. You\'re all alike, Colin, all you men, the whole lot of you. I won\'t go any further. I shall just go home again this very minute.\'

Colin caught her arm gently, and held her still for a minute by quiet force. \'My dear Minna,\' he said, \'you don\'t at all understand me. If you\'ve real............