'I've got three hundred a year all my own when I'm twenty-one.

That's why Mrs.Jennett is kinder to me than she is to you.

I wish, though, that I had somebody that belonged to me,--just a father or a mother.' 'You belong to me,' said Dick, 'for ever and ever.' 'Yes, we belong--for ever.

It's very nice.' She squeezed his arm.

The kindly darkness hid them both, and, emboldened because he could only just see the profile of Maisie's cheek with the long lashes veiling the gray eyes, Dick at the front door delivered himself of the words he had been boggling over for the last two hours.
'And I--love you, Maisie,' he said, in a whisper that seemed to him to ring across the world,--the world that he would to-morrow or the next day set out to conquer.
There was a scene, not, for the sake of discipline, to be reported, when Mrs.Jennett would have fallen upon him, first for disgraceful unpunctuality, and secondly for nearly killing himself with a forbidden weapon.
'I was playing with it, and it went off by itself,' said Dick, when the powder-pocked cheek could no longer be hidden, 'but if you think you're going to lick me you're wrong.