“Yes,” said I, looking down at the rug which was thrown over my knees. I was beginning to be quite an experienced young lady by this time, you see, and to understand certain inflections of the masculine voice, which are only to be acquired by practice.
“You don’t seem to care for me now as much as you did then,” said Jack.
I was still intensely absorbed in the leopard’s skin in front of me.
“Do you know, Nelly,” continued Jack, “that when I have been camping out in the frozen passes of the Himalayas, when I have seen the hostile array in front of me; in fact,” suddenly dropping into bathos, “all the time I was in that beastly hole Afghanistan, I used to think of the little girl I had left in England.”
“Indeed!” I murmured.
“Yes,” said Jack, “I bore the memory of you in my heart, and then when I came back you were a little girl no longer. I found you a beautiful woman, Nelly, and I wondered whether you had forgotten the days that were gone.”
Jack was becoming quite poetical in his enthusiasm. By this time he had left the old bay pony entirely to its own devices, and it was indulging in its chronic propensity of stopping and admiring the view.
“Look here, Nelly,” said Jack, with a gasp like a man who is about to pull the string of his shower-bath, “one of the things you learn in campaigning is to secure a good thing whenever you see it. Never delay or hesitate, for you never know that some other fellow may not carry it off while you are making up your mind.”
“It’s coming now,” I thought in despair, “and there’s no window for Jack to escape by after he has made the plunge.” I had gradually got to associate the ideas of love and jumping out of windows, ever since poor Sol’s confession.
“Do you think, Nell,” said Jack, “that you could ever care for me enough to share my lot forever? could you ever be my wife, Nell?”