'She wishes to make a lady of you, and will not give consent. But, Winnie, what if you plant your feet, put up your lip and say that you are disinclined to be made into manufactured goods? Any man can take a horse to water, but ten cannot make him drink.'
'Winnie,' said he, 'a caravan came to Colyton last summer with wild beasts. They went in procession through the town; there was a zebra, striped like a tiger. But a thunder shower came on just as the procession moved, and after it all the stripes had been washed from the beast, and out of the rain stepped a plain Neddy. I object to painted donkeys.'
Winefred laughed――she could not help it. She said, 'You are very uncivil, Jack.'
'I don't care whether it be a donkey or a gazelle, let us have the real thing――――'
'Jack, I am altogether with you. Let us have the real thing.'
'That is a kiss,' said he. 'No sham there.'
Jack was in excellent spirits. He could see no cloud in the sky. Winefred's love for him had broken like dawn upon his soul, and within him all was light, and twitter, and bloom.
'You fear that he will not give consent?'
'I know that he will not, any more than will my mother.'
'Winnie, my dear. Parents have had to undergo this sort of thing before, but children can bring them to reason. The inevitable is the most convincing of arguments. You do not suppose that cattle in pastures eat only buttercups? They nip up sorrel leaves as well. But presently they lie down and chew the cud――and it all gets chewed up together and turns into sweet milk. This little opposition to dad and mam is but sorrel leaves.'
'No, Jack, it is in vain. I cannot go against both. You do not know what my mother has been to me. But that is not all. O Jack, I do indeed love you, love you with every scrap of my heart. I would do anything for you that was possible. But do you not see that there are other impossibilities than those which can be beat down by brute force? I do not want to be a lady, to have stripes painted on me': she laughed and cried at once. 'Heaven be my witness, I would go down on my knees and scrub the floor, and whiten the doorstep of our house, and be happy, and warble for joy of heart, and keep, as I worked, an eye on the look-out to see you coming home from the office to me――to my heart.'