"Get up, Pendennis! Trot! Go on! Commence!" Pendennis paid no attention; she meant nothing to him, and George laughed at her fondly.

"You are the prettiest thing in this world, Lucy!" he exclaimed.

"When I see you in winter, in furs, with your cheeks red, I think you're prettiest then, but when I see you in summer, in a straw hat and a shirtwaist and a duck skirt and white gloves and those little silver buckled slippers, and your rose-coloured parasol, and your cheeks not red but with a kind of pinky glow about them, then I see I must have been wrong about the winter! When are you going to drop the 'almost' and say we're really engaged ?" "Oh, not for years! So there's the answer, and Let's trot again." But George was persistent; moreover, he had become serious during the last minute or two.

"I want to know," he said.

"I really mean it." "Let's don't be serious, George," she begged him hopefully.