"I can't believe it!" he exclaimed. "Oh, say it once—say 'I love you!'"
"I do love you, Tom—there!"
In an instant she flashed up again, while he was covering her hands with kisses, crying:
"My little Elsie! My own at last!"
"No more sentiment," said she. "Let's be reasonable, Tom; the catastrophe has reached a climax."
But it was a long time before Tom Fuller could regain composure enough to talk at all coherently, or in what Elsie termed a sensible manner.
"It's so sudden," he said. "And to have so much happiness just when I thought the last rope was going out of my hand! Why, I feel like the fellow who clung all night to the side of a precipice, expecting every moment to be dashed down a thousand feet, and when daylight came found he had hung within a foot of the ground all the while!"
"The comparison is apt and delicious," said Elsie, laughing.
"And you love me! Only say it again, Elsie—just once!"
"I won't!" said she. "But I'll box your ears if you don't stop behaving like a crazy man."